South Dakota: U.S. Senate elections

Choose another state

Latest result for each seat

U.S. Senate · 2022

South Dakota

Final result

Won

John R. Thune

Republican

69.6%

242,316 votes

BB

Brian L. Bengs

Democratic

26.1%

91,007 votes

U.S. Senate · 2020

South Dakota

Final result

Won

Mike Rounds

Republican

65.7%

276,232 votes

DA

Dan Ahlers

Democratic

34.3%

143,987 votes

Class 2 seat

Class 3 seat

Download South Dakota results as a spreadsheet (CSV)

How this archive is built

• The file holds each candidate's vote total for each race. It has no winner column. The winner shown here is the candidate with the most votes in the race; if two are level at the top, the page says so and names no winner.
• Margin is the winner's votes minus the runner-up's. Points are that margin as a share of all votes counted in the race, including blank and scattered votes where the file has them.
• Two-party share is the Democratic candidate's votes divided by the Democratic and Republican votes together. It is only worked out when both parties had a candidate.
• Where the same person is listed on more than one ballot line (for example a party line and a joint line), the lines are added together.
• A race with one candidate on the ballot, write-ins aside, is marked unopposed. The file records some of these with a total of 1 instead of a vote count; the page shows "not published" for them, not 1.
• When a seat had more than one round in an election, the last round decides the seat: a runoff, then the general election, then a round the file labels "pre". The file's codebook does not define that label, so the page shows it as the file gives it.
• Special elections are listed beside the regular races for their year and are not counted in the seat totals.
• This page is about general elections and the runoffs that follow them. Primaries and primary runoffs are on the primary results page.
• Party names are the party lines the file gives. Candidates who ran on lines other than Democratic or Republican are shown as "Other party or independent" in seat totals. Independents who caucus with a party are not grouped with it.
• Names are written in capital letters in the file. The page changes only the case.
• For the years from the Federal Election Commission, each candidate row is the FEC's own, with general-election votes. The check figure is the total the FEC prints at the end of each race ("District Votes"). Where it prints none, the page says so.
• The FEC lists a candidate who ran on several party lines (New York, Connecticut, South Carolina and others) once for each line, and in some years also on a combined line. The page adds the lines together and drops a combined line so no vote is counted twice. The party shown is the line with the most votes.
• Write-in and scattered votes are shown as one row, "Blank, over and scattered votes", not as a candidate. A candidate the FEC lists as "Unopposed" with no vote count is shown as unopposed with the count "not published".
• In Louisiana (and Georgia, for the Senate) the first round and the runoff are separate rounds of one election. The runoff decides the seat.
• Where the FEC marks as winner a candidate who did not have the most first-choice votes (Maine's ranked-choice voting), that candidate is listed first, the votes shown are first-choice votes and no margin is worked out.
• Some seats were filled twice on one ballot: once for the new term and once for the rest of a term left vacant. The second is listed as a special election beside the regular race. The FEC calls them "full term" and "unexpired term".
• For the years from the Clerk of the House, each candidate row is a line the Clerk prints, with party names as printed. The check figure is the total the Clerk prints for the race: in its state recapitulation table, or on a "Total" line. A state's table is sometimes printed sideways over two pages, and for those races the page confirms only that the lines add up to a total printed in the state's table. Where the Clerk prints a total that does not equal its own lines, both are kept and the race is flagged.
• The Clerk prints "Under Votes" and "Over Votes" lines from 2020 on, and "Blank" or "Scattering" lines in some earlier years. They are shown in the one row "Blank, over and scattered votes". A race where the Clerk prints a footnote mark instead of a vote count (a candidate with no opponent, in the states that do not count such votes) is shown as unopposed with the count "not published".
• The Senate class of a regular election comes from the six-year cycle set by the Constitution: class 1 seats were up in 2024, class 2 in 2026 and class 3 in 2028. Special elections are listed separately because the file does not say which class a seat belongs to.

Source for 2004 to 2022: Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections ↗, the Excel workbook the FEC publishes for each election (U.S. federal government work; no license text on the FEC pages). Fetched and checked November 2, 2026. The workbooks were read into one flat file; its SHA-256 is b331053c623e430a3acc12ff5daf50b81745b7d003d48254d3d47dfe94ce440e.

Source for 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2010, 2014, 2020, 2024: MIT Election Data and Science Lab, U.S. Senate statewide 1976-2024 (Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/PEJ5QU) ↗, CC0 1.0, version 8.0, released May 11, 2026. Downloaded and checked November 2, 2026. File SHA-256 6f745db1b4a0026ad837e74428f9ed6f3f77fa51eb6f858b58ebdbc186fdb3bd.

Source for 2002: Clerk of the House of Representatives, Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election ↗, the PDF the Clerk publishes for each election (U.S. federal government work; no license text on the Clerk pages). Fetched and checked November 2, 2026. The PDFs were read into one flat file; its SHA-256 is 890fe7e3ada3a04ec96bde2fd9a2dd0f9e76371eeb5f328c1b4adbf90ca37563. Where the Clerk prints a total that does not equal its own candidate lines, both are kept as printed and the race is flagged.

Check run on all 865 races with a total to check against: the candidate rows add up to the source's own total in 864. The 1 that do not are flagged where they appear.