South Dakota Bucks Political Trend, Has Now Vaccinated Half of Adult Population

Any way you look at it, COVID-19 has been a crisis.

It's been an unprecedented health crisis with more than 580,000 casualties in the United States alone.

It's been an economic crisis with millions out of work after businesses across the country were forced to close or greatly cut back in the wake of the pandemic.

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Coronavirus has also contributed to another crisis in America: the political battle of just how to deal with lessening the spread of the illness.

According to the latest numbers from CNN, the willingness of people in individual states to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is heavily tied to how that state voted in the 2020  Presidential Election.

The latest vaccination numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that with one exception (Georgia), the 17 states that have vaccinated the lowest percentage of their citizens all voted for Donald Trump last November.

On the flip side, of the 22 states with the highest vaccination levels, 19 voted for Joe Biden.

One of the three outliers in that group is South Dakota, where nearly 62 percent of voters backed Trump in 2020. The other two are neighboring states Nebraska and Iowa.

Wednesday (May 12), the Mount Rushmore State reached a vaccination milestone as the State Department of Health reported that half of South Dakota's adult population (304,435 - 50.08%) have completed the full vaccine series.

Nearly 56 percent of the state's adult population (336,010) have received at least one dose of vaccine.