Bart Pfankuch, South Dakota News Watch
While a majority of South Dakotans continue to approve of the overall performance of Gov. Kristi Noem, a new poll shows that women are far less supportive than men of the governor, her handling of health-care issues and the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The poll results come at a time when Noem has become nationally known for her strong resistance to calls by health officials to control the virus by preventing large gatherings, reducing travel, restricting commerce, limiting close personal interaction and urging or requiring the wearing of masks.
In public appearances in recent months, Noem has openly flouted state Department of Health recommendations to socially distance and wear masks to reduce the spread of the deadly virus, and has regularly promoted her hands-off approach to the pandemic in social media posts and advertising campaigns in South Dakota and beyond.
The poll showed that women — who research has shown are enduring a greater financial and emotional burden than men during the pandemic — are far less supportive of Noem’s actions and approaches. Noem, a Republican, is the state’s first female governor.
The poll, sponsored by South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota, showed that among all respondents, 53.8% strongly or somewhat approved of Noem’s overall performance in 2020, while 40.9% strongly or somewhat disapproved.
But while 63.8% of men strongly or somewhat supported Noem’s overall performance, only 44.0% of women indicated that level of support. Likewise, while only 31.6% of men strongly or somewhat disapproved of Noem’s overall performance this year, 49.9% of women strongly or somewhat disapproved of her performance.
Women were also less confident than men that Noem has communicated a clear plan of action on the pandemic, and significantly less confident than men that Noem has successfully managed health-care challenges in the state. While 65.2% of men said they felt strongly or somewhat that Noem “cares about the safety and health of my community,” only 45.0% of women felt strongly or somewhat the same way.
Women also felt less confidence in Noem’s ability to manage economic challenges, with 49.2% of women strongly or somewhat agreeing Noem was managing the economy well, compared with 68.0% of men in approval.
The largest gender gap present in the News Watch/Chiesman poll was on whether respondents felt the state should be doing more to handle the pandemic, with 40.1% of men feeling strongly or somewhat in agreement that more needs to be done, compared with 60.5% of women feeling more should be done by the state.
Political science professors interviewed by News Watch have a number of theories on why Noem is struggling to gain support of women. Augustana University professor Emily Wanless noted that Noem has never done well with women during elections and exhibits a leadership style that can appear masculine, potentially turning some women away. University of South Dakota professor Julia Hellwege offered that Noem has perhaps not shown enough empathy for people, especially women, who have been heavily affected by COVID-19.
David Wiltse, a political science professor at South Dakota State University, said the poll results show that Noem has lost some constituent support during the pandemic.
“We’re seeing some real softness among Independents, and in some important regards, there is a gender gap where women just aren’t as supportive of her as men are,” said Wiltse, who recently conducted his own poll on Noem’s performance.
In interviews with News Watch, a handful of South Dakota women had mixed reviews of the governor’s performance and handling of the pandemic, particularly her decisions to urge personal responsibility over mandates and not to require businesses to shut down.
“Kristi Noem has made it quite obvious that our state is made up of a lot of small businesses and is allowing us to stay open and earn an income and try to stay safe as adults, and I think she’s done a great job on that,” said Eileen Rossow, 72, a business owner in the Black Hills who is a registered Independent. “She’s letting me make my own decisions.”
But Marcia Langdeau, a 65-year-old Democrat from Fort Pierre, said she’s unsatisfied with Noem’s performance and handling of the pandemic.
“I don’t think she’s doing enough,” Langdeau said. “The virus is totally out of control in the Dakotas right now. There should have been a quarantine like there was in other states.”
Noem, Langdeau said, has taken too many cues about handling COVID-19 from President Donald Trump, who has also eschewed masks and urged opening of schools and the national economy.
“She needs to have her own opinion,” Langdeau said. “I thought the governor was supposed to create an agenda to make the state better; I don’t think she’s doing that.”
The telephone poll conducted by Pulse Research of Oregon included more than 13,000 calls and resulted in 600 completed surveys. It was conducted from Oct. 22-28; respondents were overwhelmingly registered voters in South Dakota, with a fairly even mix of respondents based on age, gender and income levels. The margin of error is 4%.
The poll was conducted at a time when COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths were rising in South Dakota, and since then, infections and deaths have continued to climb at a record pace. As of Nov. 11, the state had 55,705 total positive cases, with more than 600 current hospitalizations and 567 overall deaths; 62 of 66 counties had “substantial community spread” and daily new cases topped 1,200, according to the Department of Health.
Respondents were contacted at a time before the Nov. 3 election when Noem was frequently traveling out of state to campaign for Trump. Noem has since continued her vocal support for Trump, using social media recently to question the results of the election in which former Vice President Joe Biden collected enough electoral votes to win the presidency. Noem even suggested the election may have been “rigged.”
News Watch sent an email with many of the poll results and a list of questions to Noem’s office and received this response from Ian Fury, the governor’s communications director. “Governor Noem appreciates the trust of South Dakotans, and she’ll continue to trust them to make the best decisions for themselves and their loved ones.”
Gender roles, stereotypes show up in poll results
Recent research by the United Nations and other institutions has shown that women globally are bearing a disproportionate burden of the pandemic in comparison with men, both emotionally and economically.
Women make up 67% of the global health-care workforce and about 80% of nurses are women, giving many an up-close view of the illness and death caused by the pandemic. Up to four times more women than men are primary family caregivers, again placing them on the front lines of the health outcomes caused by the virus.
Women have been more affected than men when it comes to losing jobs or work hours during the pandemic. Those and other factors have created a difference in how men and women view the pandemic, the risks of COVID-19 and what responses government should take, experts said.
Hellwege, who studies the role of women in government and society at USD, said there are several likely reasons why women in the News Watch/Chiesman poll showed less support than men for Noem.
Since the pandemic began, Noem has espoused and also boasted about her approach to the coronavirus, which has been to allow businesses and schools to remain open, to promote large gatherings such as the Mount Rushmore fireworks and the Sturgis motorcycle rally, and to recommend the wearing of masks but not require it while also casting doubt on the efficacy of masks in protecting wearers from the virus.
Hellwege, who serves on the Vermillion City Council, said men are more likely to support a leader who doesn’t impose rules on them, such as requiring masks to protect themselves or others.
“They see masks as a sign of weakness, or not cool, or shameful,” Hellwege said. “For many men, taking precautions against a virus would somehow mean they are weaker than the virus. Men seem to have this idea that it’s not going to happen to them, and that overconfidence leads to them being less careful.”
But the gender gap in support of Noem is also certainly tied to the greater negative impacts the pandemic has had on the lives of many women and a sense among women that the governor has not been proactive enough in pushing precautions or restrictions to limit the spread of the virus.
Women, she said, are feeling increased impacts of the pandemic. Women are more likely to work not only in health-care fields but also in service, restaurant or retail positions that have been subject to layoffs or elimination during the pandemic.
Also, with more women serving as caretakers of children and the elderly, some are more sensitive to whether leaders are doing enough to prevent COVID-19 cases.
“Women have been much more burdened financially and emotionally with care responsibilities than men,” Hellwege said. “It’s a gendered social phenomenon that women are essentially forced, either socially or systematically, to take care of young children when day cares are closed or home-schooling is required.”
Hellewege, 34, who has no political-party affiliation, recently had her second child and said it is likely that the traditional mothering role played by women has made them more supportive of virus precautions and thereby less supportive of Noem.
“I would bet that if you asked these questions and further differentiated between women who are mothers and those without children, you’d see an even stronger response in favor of more precautions from women who are mothers,” Hellwege said.
Wanless, an associate professor in the Government and International Affairs Department at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, said she was not surprised to see poll results showing that Noem had less support among women than men.
Wanless said Noem has historically performed better with male voters, and the COVID-19 crisis may be exacerbating that difference.
“When I saw the gender gap, I saw that this is an issue that Democrats are never going to be happy with Kristi Noem and women are more likely to be Democrats, and they may judge someone harsher on a response that basically is seen as not nurturing,” Wanless said. “Her response is very much in line with a conservative approach to handling the pandemic, which is less about lifting a community up and more about personal responsibility.”
Noem, Wanless said, is in a tough spot as a woman in a leadership position during a crisis, especially with her politically conservative views. Her approach could be seen as traditionally masculine, which might cost her some support among women in South Dakota, Wanless said.
“If you think about her response to the coronavirus, it’s a very conservative argument — personal responsibility and taking care of ourselves,” Wanless said. “That runs counter to these feminine stereotypes where we believe women should have a communal, sensitive, caring outlook.”
As Noem traveled the country campaigning for Trump, Wanless said some South Dakotans may view her as trying to advance her own political career, which may attract criticism from her home-state constituency. “Women politicians are often penalized if appearing to be power-seeking, much more so than men,” Wanless said. “This is a role that requires her to be commanding, which might be associated with more masculine traits and which we might forgive of men but not women.”
Wanless added that Noem may be losing some support due to her frequent out-of-state travel at a time when the coronavirus is peaking in South Dakota.
“I don’t think the timing is opportune to not be present in your state,” she said. “It’s never played well with voters here when you become too focused on the national political scene and forget about your South Dakota roots.”
Since the election, Noem has been seen back in South Dakota, in Pierre but also visiting some communities including Buffalo, Bison, Belle Fourche, Groton, Aberdeen and Parkston.
Partisanship part of the equation
Wiltse, who teaches in the School of American and Global Studies at SDSU, said the recent poll he conducted largely dovetailed with results from the News Watch/Chiesman poll. In the SDSU poll, Noem was the most popular among all statewide South Dakota elected officials, but he did see less support among women.
Wiltse said he understands why a majority of respondents agreed with the statement that the governor had effectively communicated a clear plan of action on the virus, even as a wider majority responded that South Dakota overall should be doing more to handle the virus.
“You’re giving people a partisan cue, just by mentioning her name, and that’s going to bring out people’s partisan inclinations that are strong in South Dakota,” Wiltse said. “The second question is more neutral, and you’re depersonalizing it and removing the partisan influence.”
South Dakota remains a state with a wide majority of GOP voters and is especially dominated by Republicans in elected offices. As of November, the state had about 278,000 registered Republicans (48% of all registered voters), about 159,000 registered Democrats (27%) and roughly 142,000 Independents, Libertarians or no-party affiliation voters (24%). But results from the Nov. 3 election in partisan races in South Dakota showed a near-complete GOP sweep in statewide and legislative races.
Due to the strong Republican leanings, Wiltse said, the poll results showing a wider majority of respondents saying the state, rather than just Noem, should be doing more to handle the coronavirus is a more valuable representation of how South Dakotans feel about the overall pandemic response.
While both polls showed a majority of respondents are supportive of Noem’s performance as governor, Wiltse noted that the results from both polls indicate some “softness” in overall approval and support of the pandemic response by Noem, who won the governor’s race in 2018 by just 3.4 points over Democrat Billie Sutton.
The SDSU poll, he said, showed that about 20% of Republican respondents were not satisfied or were neutral on the governor’s handling of the pandemic.
“It’s not breaking down straight on partisan lines,” Wiltse said. “Democrats are very unified in their opposition to the governor’s handling of the virus, but there is some serious dissent within the Republican Party.”
The new statewide poll shows that women are less supportive than men when it comes to almost every aspect of the performance of Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican who is the state’s first female governor.
The poll of 600 residents was conducted from Oct. 22-28 and sponsored by South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota.
To learn more about what women are thinking and feeling about the governor and her actions, News Watch interviewed a few South Dakota women who were provided some of the News Watch/Chiesman poll results in advance. Here are some of their responses.
Mixed feelings from a licensed counselor
Nicole Heenan, 38, is a mental-health therapist who owns the Dharma Wellness Institute in Rapid City.
In emails with News Watch, Heenan wrote that she supports Noem’s decision not to lock down commerce in the state while also providing financial support to businesses and individuals hurt by the pandemic.
“It’s important for me to say as a small business owner, I’ve truly appreciated Noem’s response to the pandemic,” said Heenan, who is still taking on new clients and hosting virtual counseling sessions. “Her response, undoubtedly, saved my business.”
Yet as a licensed counselor and the mother of 18-year-old twins, Heenan is less supportive of Noem’s hands-off response to instituting precautions against the pandemic, including her reluctance to push the widespread use of masks.
Heenan, a fifth-generation South Dakotan and registered Independent who ran unsuccessfully for the Pennington County Commission in 2018, said she also feels that Noem has used the pandemic as a platform to advance her political career and push her own re-election. Heenan said Noem appears unwilling to implement COVID-19 restrictions because it could hurt her politically.
“My criticism comes with the belief that Noem’s current efforts are more about getting re-elected than taking care of her at-risk constituents,” wrote Heenan, who is the South Dakota president of the American Association of University Women. “It’s in my humble opinion that she’s too afraid to impose a mask mandate, to mitigate additional stress to our state, for fear of losing power.”
Heenan said Noem has not expressed much sympathy or empathy over the human costs of the pandemic, including for those who have died or been sickened and their families, or for the health-care workers who are enduring the trauma up close on a daily basis.
“It’s not too late to implement a mask mandate now; it would save lives and reduce stress on our healthcare system and its workers,” Heenan said. “We’re seeing communities and relationships break down because we have a leader who’s afraid to lead and to enforce the use of masks. If Noem would use that power, county and municipal governments could redirect their energy into other issues; families and social communities could put the arguments aside and start to heal and rebuild. We elect leaders to make tough choices and she’s failing to do so.”
Inn operator appreciates response
Eileen Rossow, 72, owns Peregrine Pointe Bed and Breakfast southwest of Rapid City and supports Noem’s approach of not imposing restrictions on businesses or mandating their closure during the pandemic.
Rossow shuttered her lodge from March to July but has rebounded with a strong summer season at the small inn that has five guest suites on 15 acres of Black Hills woodlands. Rossow regularly wears a mask and has taken a wide range of steps, including promoting social distancing, to keep guests safe from the coronavirus.
Her website describes virus precautions that include bleaching bedding and towels after use, sanitizing rooms with UVC lights and providing hand sanitizer in public areas.
Still, Rossow is in favor of Noem’s statements supporting the rights of South Dakotans, business owners and visitors to decide for themselves what level of precautions to take. She does not think mask mandates by government are effective in slowing the virus.
“We’re all adults, we take the responsibility for our own lives and if you do stupid things and get the virus, that’s on you,” she said. “It’s not on somebody else or on the governor or on a mayor to tell you, and to hold government officials responsible for a virus I think it basically stupid.”
Rossow, a registered Independent, called Noem “a typical independent South Dakotan” who should not be held responsible for solving health-care challenges facing the state.
“I don’t know what the governor can do to manage health-care challenges; that’s up to the general public and the health-care community,” Rossow said.
Rossow, who does not have children, said she understands that some women might not support Noem and her hands-off approach to the pandemic because women are more likely to be responsible for the health and education of their children during a time of great tumult.
After several months of speaking with her guests, many from out of state, Rossow said Noem has widespread support outside of South Dakota, and those discussions led her to offer another reason why men may support the governor more than women.
“I have to tell you, and you’re probably going to dismiss this, but maybe it’s because she’s pretty. Maybe that’s why women aren’t as supportive,” Rossow said with a chuckle. “And the guys have always said she’s not too bad to look at either.”
Coffee shop owner’s hope has faded
Noem’s refusal to wear a mask and her questioning of the efficacy of masks are examples of how the governor has put her own views and political aspirations above the health of the people of South Dakota, according to Leslie Gerrish, a parent of two and owner of The Bean coffee shop in Vermillion.
Gerrish, a registered Democrat, said she at first supported Noem’s efforts to contain and combat the virus, including her recommendation to close schools in April and her initial support for limiting gatherings, travel and commerce. “I found her calming and reasonable and comforting at the beginning,” said Gerrish, 40.
But in the months since, Gerrish said she has been turned off by Noem’s cavalier attitude toward the virus and the death and devastation it is causing in South Dakota.
“I disapprove of her performance and I strongly disagree that she cares about the health and safety of my community,” said Gerrish. “I don’t feel she’s taking everything about the virus seriously; it feels like it’s second or even third on her priority list.”
As a mother and business owner, Gerrish said she has been put off by Noem’s frequent out-of-state travel and her recent ad campaign that promoted “Less COVID, more hunting” and which showed the governor shooting a pheasant. The governor’s ads also promote the sale of T-shirts, with proceeds going to her re-election campaign account.
“People have lost people, and are hurting financially, and she’s out hunting and making T-shirts,” Gerrish said. “Whether you want to keep the economy going or not, there should be no jokes right now and nothing flippant.”
Gerrish said she and other women she knows are suffering deeply during the pandemic, both emotionally and economically.
Gerrish has lost significant revenues at her store, which now serves only carry-out, uses online ordering and requires masks of all employees and patrons. Her side business as a contract event planner has dried up completely. She has also taken on more of the stress of caring for her children during a very stressful period.
“Women’s day-to-day life has changed so much more than men, and I’m not talking about getting the virus,” she said. “My husband’s life flipped upside down but mine flipped upside down a million times more.”
Gerrish said Noem has seemed tone-deaf in her public statements and frequent appearances on conservative national TV outlets, where she boasts that South Dakota is open for business, relocations and vacationing, and trumpets her hands-off approach to the virus at a time South Dakota cases and deaths are spiking.
“I want her to follow the science in this, but also just be present and show us she cares,” Gerrish said. “Show me you care; say the words, ‘I care,’ and talk about the people who are suffering. This is a health emergency and she’s done nothing to say that we should be sticking together, that we can be safe together.”
Republican senator supports mask use
State Sen. Deb Soholt, R-Sioux Falls, said she generally supports the efforts of Noem and her administration in trying to handle the virus.
“I think that essentially she and her team have been working very hard to try to bring us through this pandemic and I really respect the work they have done,” Soholt said. “I do know our governor is working very closely with our health systems.”
But as a nurse and mother, Soholt, 64, said she believes masks help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and disagrees with Noem’s hesitancy to wear a mask, urge or mandate their usage and promote their effectiveness.
Soholt said she had recently visited two other states with Republican governors — Arizona and Utah — where mask use was supported and she saw greater use in public. As a result, she felt safer in moving about and participating in the local economy.
“On this issue of masking, I do disagree, but reasonable people will disagree; it doesn’t mean I think she’s a terrible leader,” Soholt said.
Greater mask usage statewide could more quickly flatten the rising curve of virus cases and ultimately result in the South Dakota economy’s opening up further and more quickly, Soholt said.
Noem has opposed mask mandates and has repeatedly stressed that individuals can decide for themselves whether to wear a mask. Soholt said that even a short-term, widespread mask mandate in South Dakota could slow the spread of the virus and likely save lives.
“This is where our rugged independence kind of gets in our way of looking out for our collective community,” Soholt said. “My mask is about caring about you, and your mask is about caring about me. To me, with this virus, it’s one of those things where every now and then, we have to rise up tougher as people and care about each other more than we care about ourselves.”
