“This victory will benefit tens of thousands of South Dakotans who will choose to use the ballot measure process to increase access to health care for their families and neighbors, raise wages, and more policies that improve lives,” Hall said. “We look forward to what’s next in South Dakota: an aggressive campaign to expand Medicaid in the state.”

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One hurdle is done, the next for South Dakota is passing the initiative, but with the kind of margin that the constitutional amendment against it was defeated, they’re at least halfway there. If they succeed, there will just be 11 loser states hanging on to a decade-old battle against Obamacare.

The ham-handedness of the Republicans in this wasn’t lost on voters, since some of them openly admitted they were pushing this amendment specifically to derail Medicaid expansion. That didn’t work.

“First and foremost, we know that South Dakotans came out because they knew the sacred tradition of majority rule was on the ballot,” said Zach Nistler, a spokesman for South Dakotans for Fair Elections, which ran the opposition campaign.

There’s a lesson for the nation’s Democrats to be had in this effort. A campaign well-funded in part by the state’s three big health systems—all of which see the need for getting coverage to some 42,000 South Dakotans—focused on this effort by Republicans to enshrine minority rule. The “ad blitz” as the Argus Leader called it, said the amendment they defeated “would allow 41% of the electorate to control ballot measures that raised taxes or spending.”

That’s a message that worked with ridiculously deep-red South Dakota voters. It’s a message Democrats need to pick up for all their Senate races this fall, because that’s exactly what Republicans at every level are after—minority rule forever.