Prairie Center Township in Clay County, South Dakota is a small rural community with a population of approximately 400 people. Despite its small size, politics in the township are very important to residents. The Prairie Center Township Board is composed of five township board members elected by the citizens every two years. This board works to ensure that the town’s resources are allocated properly and that all decisions made are done so for the benefit of the residents. Additionally, each year, Prairie Center Township holds elections for various local offices including municipal school district and library board members. These offices are vital to ensuring that basic services such as schools and libraries are functioning properly and providing quality services to the citizens. Finally, voters from Prairie Center Township also participate in state and national elections to select their representatives on these levels of government. In summary, politics plays an important role in Prairie Center Township, despite its size, with citizens voting on both local and national levels to ensure that their needs are heard.
The political climate in Prairie Center township (Clay County), SD is somewhat conservative.
Clay County, SD is somewhat liberal. In Clay County, SD 54.1% of the people voted Democrat in the last presidential election, 43.1% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 2.8% voted Independent.
In the last Presidential election, Clay county remained strongly Democratic, 54.1% to 43.1%.
Clay county voted Democratic in every Presidential election since 2000.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
Prairie Center township (Clay County), SD is somewhat conservative.
Clay County, South Dakota is somewhat liberal.
Vermillion Metro Area is somewhat liberal.
South Dakota is strongly conservative.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index is based on recent voting in national elections, federal campaign contributions by local residents, and consumer personality profiles.
VoteWord™
Displaying 20 years of Presidential voting, visualized in one word.
Prairie Center township (Clay County), South Dakota: d D D D d D
How It Works:
Here at BestPlaces, we were looking at the voting patterns since the 2000 election and realized that we could express the results of each election as one letter. R if the Republican Party candidate won, D if the Democratic Party candidate won and I if the Independent Party candidate won. The six elections (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) would be expressed as six-letter word (R R D R R).
Then we went a little further and added the dimension of magnitude. If the difference of victory was greater than 10 percent, the letter is upper case, and lower case if the difference was less than 10 percent. This allows us to see interesting voting patterns at just a glance.
Here's the VoteWord for Iowa d r d d r. In the last six elections the state has been closely contested, voting narrowly for the Republican Party candidate in 2016 and 2020 after voting for the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. Virginia (r r d d d D) has voted for the Democratic Party in the last three elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in Prairie Center township (Clay County), SD
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 755 contributions totaling $47,191 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $63 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 94 contributions totaling $18,605 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $198 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)