While I felt last week that Sutton didn’t have a chance, some things happened this past week which have me believe at this point the race is a tie. If the election were held today I think either one could win by just a few hundred votes.
I have felt that Billie needed certain stars to align in order to win this, here are some important factors;
• Mason Dixon poll puts them at a tie
• Many internal democratic polls and some unscientific online polls have Sutton ahead by 2-5 points
• Voter turnout is predicted at 50%, this helps to close the Dem/Rep voter gap
• Sutton has wide support amongst his party’s voters, Noem, not so much
• Some voters don’t want a woman as governor, and while that doesn’t mean they will vote for Sutton, they may leave it blank
• I think Sutton appeals to indy’s more than Noem, because Noem is taking a hard right conservative approach to the campaign
• Noem’s negative campaigning is NOT working because it is painfully false, unlike her ads against Jackley which were true. This postcard below if further proof of the gutter politics the SD GOP plays, which just piss off voters more than anything. It would be different if Sutton was being negative to, but all he does is show Noem’s true record of nothingness.
• Trump’s rating is way down at 49% in SD. This doesn’t bode well for a Washington Republican like Noem
• Billie performed very well in the last debate, even at one point laughing at Noem’s ridiculous claims about Bernie Sanders.
• Kristi can’t swim (well this isn’t a bad thing, I can’t either).
This is anyone’s game at this point. This next week will be crucial to both campaigns to sway those last handful of undecided.
UPDATE: I found this endorsement ad interesting. Besides the fact that it is very generic and you can tell that Dennis doesn’t really know diddle about Kristi except that she is a fellow Republican (He should have just said that, “Vote for Kristi, because she is a Republican like me”), I found it interesting they would film the commercial in a high rise office in Sioux Falls. If you were the current sitting governor and you were endorsing a governor candidate, wouldn’t you have filmed this commercial at the Capital or at least in front of the Capital instead of in an office building in Sioux Falls? FAIL.
