Poll Part 3: South Dakotans support ballot initiative process and oppose lawmaker interference
Many South Dakotans feel that democracy is not working very well in America right now, but those same people are highly supportive of their own right to make law directly from the voting booth.
According to a recent statewide poll, a wide majority of South Dakota residents supports the citizen-led
Poll Part 2: Why some South Dakotans are pessimistic about the future
Long-standing economic hardships have prevented a sizable segment of the South Dakota population from achieving financial stability and prosperity, and those hurdles have resulted in a sense of pessimism for what awaits future generations, according to two experts who study the state economy.
State and federal data routinely show that:
New poll reveals economic pessimism and dissatisfaction with democratic institutions
As the state emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, some residents of South Dakota are uneasy about what life holds for future generations and have only limited confidence in the effectiveness of some democratic institutions.
The findings are part of a large set of results from a recent poll of 500
Frenzied housing market putting homeownership out of reach for some South Dakotans
Historically low interest rates, a rush of out-of-state homebuyers, limited inventory and higher construction prices for new homes have made for a frenzied housing market that has put homeownership further out of reach for some South Dakota residents.
The highly competitive housing market is leading to a range of outcomes
South Dakota News Watch wins regional reporting awards for work published in 2020
South Dakota News Watch won a first-place award and three finalist citations in the annual Great Plains Journalism Awards for work produced in 2020. News Watch competed against newspapers of all sizes in an eight-state region that includes the Dakotas, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
Content Director Bart
Experts fear child abuse rose and was more severe in SD during COVID-19 pandemic
Child protection advocates are worried that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in child-abuse cases in South Dakota and that the abuse of children was more severe than in the past.
They are also concerned that the pandemic led to an increase in child-on-child abuse that was more rare
Viability of rural ambulance services in S.D. at risk due to staffing and funding shortages
Rural ambulance services in South Dakota are having an increasingly hard time recruiting volunteers and generating revenues, putting the stability of the services at risk and making it more likely that rural residents will endure longer response times in emergencies or possibly lose ambulance service altogether.
While most larger cities