South Dakota was won by Kansas Senator Bob Dole, who was running against incumbent United States President Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

Clinton ran a second time with former Tennessee Senator Al Gore as vice president, and Dole ran with former New York Congressman Jack Kemp.

[1] South Dakota weighed in for this election as 12 points more Republican than the national average.

The presidential election of 1996 was a very multi-partisan election for South Dakota, with more than ten percent of the electorate voting for third-party candidates.

In his second bid for the presidency, Ross Perot led the newly reformed Reform Party to gain over nine percent of the votes in South Dakota, and to pull in support nationally as the most popular third-party candidate to run for United States Presidency in recent times.