South Dakota outcomes during their Senate service · scored 2015–2025
Category
Latest
Score vs. peers
Education scale score
281.1 ’24
+1.28σ
Air quality AQI
36.5 ’24
−0.02σ
Water quality % of systems with a violation
6.4 ’25
+0.55σ
Unemployment %
2.1 ’25
+2.24σ
Health coverage % of adults 18-64 uninsured
10.7 ’24
−0.18σ
Tax burden % of personal income
3.8 ’24
+1.24σ
Energy cost cents/kWh
12.9 ’24
+0.83σ
Cost of living index, US=100
88.6 ’24
+0.65σ
Homicide age-adjusted deaths per 100,000
6.6 ’24
−0.45σ
Teen births per 1,000 females 15-19
15.3 ’24
−0.48σ
Wellbeing mean poor-mental-health days of 30
4.5 ’24
−0.15σ
Obesity % of adults
37.0 ’24
−1.37σ
Early literacy % of 4th-graders below basic
39.9 ’24
+0.05σ
Gun deaths age-adjusted deaths per 100,000
17.3 ’24
−0.37σ
Food-aid access index (higher = easier access)
0.6 ’23
−1.25σ
Jobless-benefit access % of unemployed receiving UI
19.2 ’24
+0.22σ
Scoring windows run 2015–2025 and differ by metric — none starts before 2015, the year Rounds entered the Senate. “Latest” is a different year by metric (2023–2025); every row states its own. Each row’s window, source and last-checked date are behind its ? button.
Their own record
Value
Legislative effectiveness LES · chamber avg = 1.0 · 118th Congress
1.53
Missed votes lifetime, all service (GovTrack)
8.2%
Ideology 0 = left · 1 = right · 119th Congress sponsorship analysis (GovTrack)
0.77
Promises kept
In human review
A senator’s constituency is the whole state, so they are scored on the same verified state outcomes as the governor — ranked against other senators — alongside their own legislative record. Influence is shared with 99 colleagues and the governor; the score shows relative movement, not sole credit. Methodology v2.5
The Rundown
No. 1 of 91 senators — on the 64% of the grade we can actually measure.
Bills that move. A Legislative Effectiveness Score of 1.53 — the scale is set so each chamber averages 1.00, and it counts only the bills a member sponsors themselves and how far each one gets. The grade scores that against members of the same chamber on the same side of the majority, so it reflects lawmaking rather than who holds the gavel: the same score sits differently in the majority than out of it. Measured over the 118th Congress, now complete.
Fiscal votes. The deficit footprint of the laws Rounds voted for, per CBO's estimates, ranked against other senators with enough scored votes — a lower footprint ranks higher. Six scored laws today, dollar-dominated by the largest, so this measures the pandemic-era fiscal record more than a career; coverage broadens as laws are added. Every vote and its CBO figure is itemized in the debt section below.
South Dakota outcomes. South Dakota's own record contributes here, at 97% of full weight — Rounds is 11.6 years into Senate service, and a state is shared with 99 colleagues and a governor. The longer the tenure, the more of the state's record is attributed.
Not counted — 35% of the rubric. promise-keeping (25%): promise/position alignment publishes only after two agreeing human reviews · attendance (10%): needs per-Congress missed votes; our figure is lifetime
So this is a ranking of 3 things, not a verdict on a career. Senators are also scored on their state's outcomes, ranked only against other senators. Everything reserved above publishes the moment it can be measured fairly, and never before.
When Rounds first took office in 2015, the federal debt stood at $17.82 trillion (end of fiscal 2014; Treasury). As of 2026-08-06 it is $39.89 trillion (Treasury, daily). That rise spans presidents, majorities and economies — it belongs to no single member, which is why it is context here and part of no grade. What is Rounds’s own: their recorded votes when the major fiscal bills came through, beside what the Congressional Budget Office estimated each law would do to deficits.
Total public debt outstanding, fiscal 2014–present, in nominal dollars — no adjustment for inflation or the size of the economy, so early decades understate their era’s burden. Y-axis starts at zero. Source: Treasury.
Debt figures as of the data refresh on 2026-08-08. These same votes feed the grade’s fiscal-conduct block (10%, methodology v2.5) — the debt itself feeds nothing: it belongs to no single member, and only their own votes are scored. The change is preregistered and dated in the changelog.
The promise ledger
The evidence base for the promise-keeping block of the grade — the 25% shown as reserved on the card above. What Rounds said they would do, in their own words, beside what they did. Said-columns hold verbatim quotes only, from dated, linkable sources, and publish only after two agreeing human reviews — the methodology’s bar, and the reason a column may be empty: the bar does not move to fill it.
In their speeches
No promise from a speech has been published for Rounds. One appears here only as a verbatim quote from a dated transcript, and only after two agreeing human reviews — the column stays empty until something clears that bar. The raw material is public meanwhile: search C-SPAN’s video archive for Rounds →
In their advertising
None published yet — same bar as speeches. The public archives are searchable now: the Meta Ad Library and Google’s ad-transparency archive, searched by name — a search, so same-named others may appear in the results.
Bills they introduced
8 bills and resolutions sponsored in the 119th Congress — the newest:
S. 5277 — A bill to establish a ranchland program to support the United States cow herd, and for oth…
Latest action (2026-08-06): Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
S. 5310 — A bill to support the development of the robotics industry in the United States, and for o…
Latest action (2026-08-06): Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
S. 5240 — A bill to amend the Federal Crop Insurance Reform and Department of Agriculture Reorganiza…
Latest action (2026-08-04): Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
S. 5211 — A bill to require the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Chairman of the Joint …
Latest action (2026-08-03): Read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
Latest action (2026-07-27): Read twice and referred to the Committee on Armed Services.
From the Congress.gov API, as of 2026-08-08. Latest actions are quoted from the record — most introduced bills die in committee, and that is part of the record too.
These are the major bills this site tracks line by line — not a full voting record. A member casts hundreds of votes a Congress; these 8 are the ones whose spending has been extracted and cited from the enacted text.
Every date links to the official roll call for Rounds’s own chamber. “Did not vote” is not “absent” — the record shows no vote was cast and gives no reason, which is often illness, travel or a paired vote. Nothing on this table is counted toward or against Rounds’s grade.
What Rounds voted to fund
These pies aggregate the largest verified spending items — appropriations and mandatory outlays — in the bills Rounds cast a recorded vote on, sliced by category, every dollar quoted from the bill text. Authorizations, guarantee ceilings and pay-fors are excluded, exactly as on the bill pages. This shows what the bills contained, by Rounds’s own votes — not a claim that Rounds wrote the spending or that it did or didn’t work. Every dollar in these pies is quoted from the bill text and cited, item by item, on the bill’s own page.
The remaining 146 items are quoted in full on the bill pages.
Federal spending during Rounds’s current term
Total U.S. federal outlays for each fiscal year of Rounds’s current term. This is the whole federal budget — mostly Social Security, Medicare, defense, interest on the debt, and prior commitments — not money Rounds personally directed. A president proposes and Congress appropriates; no single official controls it.
Nominal dollars — not adjusted for inflation. Bar lengths compare dollars of different years, so a longer bar can be higher prices rather than more spending. Do not read these bars as a real trend.
FY21
$6.82T74% in term−$2.77T deficit
FY22
$6.27T−$1.37T deficit
FY23
$6.13T−$1.69T deficit
FY24
$6.74T−$1.82T deficit
FY25
$7.01T−$1.77T deficit
Source: OMB Historical Tables, Table 1.1 (Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits: 1789-present) · figures · compiled Aug. 8, 2026. Fiscal years run Oct–Sep, so they do not line up with the start of a term — marked above with the share that fell inside this term.
Closed fiscal years published for this term so far: FY2021–FY2025. FY2026 closes Sept. 30, 2026 and OMB has not published it. A short chart here means the term is young and the series stops at the last closed year — not that spending stopped.
How Rounds is graded
A senator’s constituency is the whole state, so Rounds is graded on the same verified state outcomes as the governor — measured as the change on their watch versus the other 49 states, capped because influence is shared with 99 colleagues, the governor and a world economy — blended with the one thing we can measure of what they personally control: how far the legislation they sponsor actually moves. Voting alignment and attendance are defined in the rubric but reserved, not counted, so no vote of theirs is in this grade today. Every part decomposes on the card above, and the “measured” figure says how much of the grade is real versus still reserved.
Legislative Effectiveness Scores come from the Center for Effective Lawmaking, which benchmarks each chamber’s average to 1.0. Voting statistics come from GovTrack. The Honesty ledger — promises matched against this member’s votes — publishes only with an evidence trail and two agreeing human reviews.