 Deuel County is a typical eastern South Dakota county in its political history, which is somewhat akin to the Midwestern states of Iowa and Minnesota.It was strongly Republican in its early years, with no Democrat except William Jennings Bryan gaining forty percent up to 1928.Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 became the first Democrat to carry the county, but lost it to Alf Landon in 1936, whilst – like most of the Midwest – the county showed a powerful anti-Roosevelt trend in 1940 and 1944 due to opposition to World War II.