South Dakota welcomes population increase

The new data, which was submitted to Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, and state legislature Wednesday, are likely to be welcome news.

“Population’s a serious issue here,” says Kenneth Blanchard, professor of political science at Northern State University in Aberdeen. “We used to have two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, but we lost one after the last Census. It wasn’t because we were losing population, it was because we were growing really slowly and the rest of the country was growing really fast.”