Party unity 45%, the lowest of 35 in the South Dakota Senate (average 76%). 299 roll calls in the SD 2025–26 session.
Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where Wipf voted with the majority of South Dakota Senate Republicans; it is ranked within the South Dakota Senate. The count covers every roll call where Wipf voted opposite that majority.
At a glance
4 measures against the South Dakota Senate. 74% of the 50 bills Wipf sponsored got out of committee, in the bottom half of the South Dakota Senate. Wipf sits at +0.31 on the CSIP scale, more liberal than 58% of State Senate Republicans.
The measures on which Wipf sits furthest from the middle of the South Dakota Senate, each against the same group, with the CSIP score when there is one. Every number is explained in its own section below.
Party unity
South Dakota Senate average 76% · ranks 35th of 35 · 46 votes against the majority of South Dakota Senate Republicans
Attendance
South Dakota Senate average 96.6% · ranks 5th of 35 · 299 roll calls
Out of committee
South Dakota Senate average 78% · ranks 24th of 34
CSIP ideology
More liberal than 58% of State Senate Republicans · ± 0.09
Statements
Roll calls
Compared with South Dakota Senate
Peer group: South Dakota Senate. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; the thick bar is Wipf, the thin grey bar the peer average. The headline is the measure on which Wipf is most unusual among peers (Methods, §08).
What Wipf says
No statements for the SD 2025–26 session.No classified statements (posts, press releases, newsletters, floor speeches) in this time window.
Policy
No policy statements for the SD 2025–26 session.No classified statements (posts, press releases, newsletters, floor speeches) in this time window.
Ideology
Wipf sits at +0.31 on the CSIP scale, right of 0, more liberal than 58% of State Senate Republicans. Approximate range +0.23 to +0.40, which understates the uncertainty; from 0 donors and 159 roll calls.
CSIP, the lab’s Common-Space Ideal Point, places every official, federal and state, on one left–right scale, estimated from roll-call votes, who gives money to whom, and the text of statements. Negative is left of 0, positive right of it; 0 is the centre of the scale, not a definition of “moderate”.
CSIP ideal point
Approximate range +0.23 to +0.40. From 0 donors and 159 roll calls. Run 2026-10-25T215945. Blue is left of 0, red right of 0.
The outlined dot is Wipf, coloured by its side of 0 (blue left, red right, deeper further out); the bar through it is the approximate range (±1.96 standard errors), which understates the uncertainty; the grey ticks below are the medians of Wipf’s groups. 0 is the centre of the scale, not “moderate” by definition.
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score summarises how an official votes, who funds them and how they talk, relative to everyone else. It does not grade positions as good or bad, and two officials with the same score can differ on any single issue. The ± range is 1.96 standard errors, which understates the uncertainty: scores whose ranges overlap may not differ at all, and even scores whose ranges do not overlap may not differ.
Where Wipf sits
Every official in each group, on the CSIP scale
Show the data
| Group | Officials | Median | Share left of Wipf |
|---|---|---|---|
| State Senate Republicans | 1083 | +0.4 | 41% |
| South Dakota Senate | 35 | +0.1 | 74% |
| All State Senate | 1909 | +0.1 | 67% |
How to read the strips
Every small dot is one official on the same scale, coloured by its own score (blue left of 0, red right of 0, grey at 0, deeper further out) and spread up and down only to keep dots apart; where a group is crowded the dots overlap, and darker patches mean more officials. The large outlined dot is Wipf in every row; the rule is each group’s median. The table under the figure gives the share of each group to the left of Wipf.
Money
No campaign-finance data.No campaign-finance records are matched to this official.
Votes
Wipf voted with the majority of South Dakota Senate Republicans on 45% of party-line votes and missed none of 299 roll calls. South Dakota Senate on average: 76% party unity, 96.6% attendance. Across all roll calls, Wipf voted against the majority of South Dakota Senate Republicans 46 times.
299 roll calls Wipf could vote on in the SD 2025–26 session, compared with South Dakota Senate. Attendance is the share with a vote recorded. Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where Wipf voted with the majority of South Dakota Senate Republicans. The count of votes against that majority covers every roll call where the majority took a side.
votes against the majority of South Dakota Senate Republicans
Party unity 45%, South Dakota Senate average 76%, ranks 35th of 35. 299 roll calls in the SD 2025–26 session.
Attendance and party unity
The thick bar is Wipf, the thin grey bar the South Dakota Senate average. The scale runs from 40% to 100% to show the gap.
Show the data
| Row | Wipf | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance | 100% | 96.6% |
| Party unity | 45% | 76% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
A missed roll call has many causes, from illness to campaigning, so attendance says how often, not why. A vote against the majority can be on procedure as well as substance, and many fall on roll calls where both parties split; the key votes below show the ones that decided something.
Key votes
25 roll calls the lab flagged as key in the SD 2025–26 session
| Party split (yea–nay) | Why it’s key | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 12, 2026 | HB 1326 appropriate money for the ordinary expenses of the legislative, judicial, and executive departments of the state, the current expenses of state institutions, interest on the public debt, and common schools. Do Pass | Yea | With majority | pass | D 3–0 · R 22–9Democrats 3 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 22 yea, 9 nay | became law · party crossover |
| Mar 12, 2026 | HB 1051 revise property tax levies for school districts and to revise the state aid to general and special education formulas. Do Pass Amended | Yea | With majority | pass | D 3–0 · R 31–0Democrats 3 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 31 yea, 0 nay | became law |
| Mar 12, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 3–0 · R 23–8Democrats 3 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 23 yea, 8 nay | became law · party crossover | |
| Mar 9, 2026 | HB 1006 create a taskforce to study the creation of Indian medicaid managed care entities in the state. Do Pass Amended | Yea | With majority | pass | D 3–0 · R 29–2Democrats 3 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 29 yea, 2 nay | became law |
| Mar 9, 2026 | HB 1241 modify the requirements for public notice of a hearing prior to a vote to impose an excess tax levy, and to modify requirements to refer an excess tax levy of a school district to a vote. Do Pass Amended | Nay | Against majority | fail | D 1–2 · R 16–15Democrats 1 yea, 2 nay; Republicans 16 yea, 15 nay | close vote · party crossover |
How key votes are chosen
Automatically: a final-passage or override vote where the measure became law, the margin was under 10%, at least 10% of either party voted against its majority, or the bill was among the 25 most mentioned in officials’ own statements. Up to 25 per window, most recent first; five are shown. Bars show yea on the left, nay on the right, per party.
Votes most often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as Wipf most often
- Kyle SchoenfishR299 shared votes95%
- Glen VilhauerR299 shared votes94%
- Sydney DavisR292 shared votes94%
- Stephanie SauderR299 shared votes94%
- Tim ReedR296 shared votes94%
Votes least often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as Wipf least often
- John CarleyR281 shared votes51%
- Greg BlancR299 shared votes63%
- Taffy HowardR298 shared votes63%
- Tom PischkeR294 shared votes66%
- Red Dawn FosterD263 shared votes67%
How to read the agreement lists
The share of roll calls both members voted on where they voted the same way, among colleagues sharing at least 50 such votes. High agreement with members of the other party is common on routine votes.
Full voting record
SD 2025–26 session, loads in batches
Legislation
Wipf sponsored 50 bills in the SD 2025–26 session; 27 became law. Cosponsored 0 others. 74% of sponsored bills got out of committee (South Dakota Senate average 78%; 24th of 34).
The bills Wipf sponsored and cosponsored in the SD 2025–26 session, from the official bill records, and how far each got: introduced, referred to or acted on in committee, passed one chamber, passed both, became law. A bill counts at every stage it has reached, so the blocks only shrink to the right.
Bills by stage
Counts for the SD 2025–26 session
Show the data
| Role | Introduced | In committee | Passed one chamber | Passed both chambers | Became law |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored | 50 | 42 | 34 | 29 | 27 |
| Cosponsored | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
How to read the blocks
Ink blocks are bills Wipf sponsored, ochre blocks bills Wipf cosponsored; the figure above each block is the count. Most bills in any legislature never leave committee, so a short staircase is the norm.
of sponsored bills got out of committee
South Dakota Senate average 78%. Ranks 24th of 34.
Cosponsorship partners
Colleagues who most often cosponsor with Wipf, by number of shared bills in the SD 2025–26 session; the square shows their party.
- Eric Emery27
- Tim Goodwin24
- Erik Muckey21
- Carl Perry18
- Scott Moore17
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score is the share of sponsored bills that a committee reported out or a chamber passed, with at least 5 sponsored bills, ranked within the peer group. Members of the majority party and committee chairs move more bills, so the rank reflects position in the chamber as well as effort. Cosponsorship partners are the five colleagues who share the most of Wipf’s bills; the toggle shows more.
Bill list
Sponsored and cosponsored, with status and policy area; five are shown, the toggle shows the rest
| SC 822 | honoring TKO’s Custom Catering and Capitol Cafe for outstanding service. | Sponsor | Mar 4, 2026 | Introduced | Unassigned | S.J. 471 Mar 4, 2026 |
| SC 815 | honoring Shane Jordan as the 2025 winner of the Hugh Hammond Bennett Conservation Planner Award. | Sponsor | Mar 3, 2026 | Introduced | Unassigned | S.J. 449 Mar 3, 2026 |
| SC 812 | to acknowledge Glenn Muller's distinguished career and congratulate him on his achievements. | Sponsor | Feb 24, 2026 | Introduced | Unassigned | S.J. 388 Feb 24, 2026 |
| HB 1138 | require the licensure of non-medical home care agencies, and to provide a penalty therefor. | Sponsor | Feb 20, 2026 | Passed both chambers | Health(model) | Delivered veto sustained to the Secretary of State H.J. 583 Mar 30, 2026 |
| SB 132 | modify provisions related to the South Dakota Veterans Council. | Sponsor | Feb 10, 2026 | Became law | Armed Forces and National Security(model) | Signed by the Governor on 2026-03-30 S.J. 548 Mar 30, 2026 |
Online
The lab crawls Wipf’s official and campaign websites (weekly for Congress, monthly for the states) and keeps every page’s text, so changes can be read later; it also records social accounts and describes the images Wipf posts with a vision model.
Websites
No websites are tracked for this official.
How to read the counts
“Pages crawled” is the size of the site at the last crawl; “changes in 90 days” counts pages whose text differed from the previous crawl. Sites change for many routine reasons, such as new press releases, so a high count is not by itself notable.
Social accounts
No social accounts on file.
Images Wipf posted
No images from Wipf’s posts have been described.
About the descriptions
Written by a vision model and may be wrong. Open the post to see the original. Five are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
State floor speeches
No transcribed state floor speeches are matched to this legislator yet.
Floor speeches
Transcribed from chamber video or captions by the lab. They are not classified for kinds of statement.
Methods and sources
How this page was made. Profile built Oct 28, 2026; site last built Oct 28, 2026. Every number on the page is computed from the sources listed here, by the same rules for every official; nothing is written by hand.
The headline
The headline is the measure on which Wipf is most unusual among South Dakota Senate, chosen by one rule for every official of every party. The candidates are the rate of each kind of statement and of extreme labels, party unity, attendance, the small-donor share, the in-state share and total receipts of the latest cycle, the share of sponsored bills that got out of committee, talk-to-bills agreement, and the CSIP score’s place within the party group.
The builder ranks every measure within the same peer group the page compares it with, and writes each official’s percentile: the share of the group below the value, ties counting half, so 0.5 is the median and a value shared by many never ranks first. A measure’s score is how far that percentile sits from the median (0 in the middle, 0.5 at either end), and the highest score leads if it is above 0.25, outside the middle half of the group. Scores within 0.03 of each other are a tie, broken in this order: votes against the party majority, kinds of statement, ideology, roll calls missed, small donations, in-state money, legislation, agreement, extreme labels, receipts.
A measure counts only with at least 200 statements, 100 roll calls or 5 sponsored bills behind it and a peer group of at least 10. Two things never lead: high party unity or attendance, where most members sit, and a high rate of a kind of statement backed by fewer than 10 statements. When nothing qualifies, the headline is a neutral fact instead: statements classified, or years in office. The wording always names the direction (“in the bottom 5% of …”, “votes against the majority of …”).
Identifiers
- Profile id
- a5c12215-2e38-4d1f-a8b0-cc6ce0e859ca
- Open States
- ocd-person/a5c12215-2e38-4d1f-a8b0-cc6ce0e859ca
Bulk files with the same data for every official:
Freshness of this profile’s data
- What politicians sayOct 27, 20261 days agoMembers of Congress: tweets since 2017; press releases, newsletters and floor speeches since 2022. State legislators: tweets since May 2024. Governors: tweets since January 2025. Labels from an LLM classifier.
- Roll calls (state)Oct 21, 20267 days agoOpen States floor roll calls, 2019 on (none for AK and MO).
- Bills (state)Oct 28, 2026todayOpen States bills and sponsors, 2019 on; stages from roll calls.
- Campaign money (state)no dateState campaign-finance agencies, 2019 on; aggregates only.
- Ideology (CSIP)Oct 25, 20263 days agoCommon-Space Ideal Points (CSIP), current validated run.
- WebsitesOct 25, 20263 days agoWeekly crawls of federal sites since April 2026; monthly state crawls since June 2026.
- State floor speechesOct 21, 20267 days agoState floor speech turns (published transcripts and captions), 2020 on; not LLM-classified.
How the measures work
- What politicians say
- Every post, press release, newsletter and congressional floor speech is read by a language model and marked for personal attacks, policy criticism, policy discussion, bipartisanship and credit claiming. A statement can be in several. Rates are shares of statements in the window. The methods paper.
- Extreme labels
- A statement has an extreme label when it calls a politician, party or policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who the label is aimed at.
- Policy areas and agreement
- Statements and bills share 25 Congressional Research Service policy areas (state bills are assigned by a language model). Agreement is 1 − Jensen–Shannon distance between the two distributions, shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
- Ideology (CSIP)
- Common-Space Ideal Points place federal and state officials on one left–right scale, estimated jointly from roll calls, campaign contributions and the text of statements, with standard errors. Only a validated run is shown. The methods paper.
- Campaign money
- Campaigns report by name only donors who give more than $200 in a cycle; smaller gifts are reported as one total. Federal totals and the small-donor share come from the FEC’s financial summaries of each campaign committee. Donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations cover itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift totals, so state figures are itemized only. The lab never publishes donor names.
- Votes and key votes
- Attendance, party unity and the count of votes against the majority of an official’s own party come from roll calls (Voteview for Congress, chamber records for the states). Key votes are final-passage or override votes that became law, were decided by under 10%, saw at least 10% of a party vote against its majority, or concerned one of the 25 bills most mentioned in officials’ statements.
- Peers and ranks
- Comparisons are with the same party, chamber and level (for example House Democrats); state legislators are compared within their state and chamber for votes. Every comparison names its group. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; tied values share the average of their ranks, and the percentile is the share of the group below the value, ties counting half.
America’s Political Pulse · Polarization Research Lab