How would the political climate of the two Dakots be different if, instead of being split north and south, the Dakota territory was split east and west - with the Missouri River being the natural place to draw the boundary?
I imagine East Dakota would be consistently Democratic, and would regularly vote send Democrats to Congress and deliver electoral votes to Democratic nominees?
Also, would East Dakota be populous enough to gain another electoral vote?
For West Dakota to be a state, we would probably need to split it more east of the Missouri River, preferably including Bismark and Minot in North Dakota. With purely the Missouri River as the dividing line, it only has a population of 331,914. The ND portion only has 89,544 people. Overall the portion voted 58.5% McCain, 39.1% Obama. Meanwhile the East Dakota portion has a population of 1,154,857 and votes 51.8% McCain, 46.3% Obama.
If I were to do this, I would shift both borders to the right, gaining significant population in the ND portion and little in the SD portion. Something like this:
(Looking back I probably should've cut off Gregory county).
With this, the east has a population of 920,804 (542,977 from SD, 377,827 from ND) and the west has a population of 565,967 (271,203 from SD, 294,764 from ND) (just 2,000 more than Wyoming). In this case West Dakota would vote about 59-60% McCain (Safe R) and East Dakota would vote around 49-50% McCain (Likely R)
