Kristi Noem dogged by poor polling amid fallout from tale of killing puppy

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, saw polling numbers plummet after the Guardian revealed that she writes in a new book about the day she shot dead a hunting dog and an un-castrated goat, a revelation that ignited a political storm.

Announcing what it called its “Noem Puppy Murder Poll Findings”, New River Strategies, a Democratic firm, said 81% of Americans disapproved of Noem’s decision to shoot Cricket, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens, thereby earning a trip to a gravel pit to die.

According to Noem’s account, the goat, which Noem did not name, followed Cricket to the pit because Noem deemed his odour and behaviour unacceptable on her farm. By Noem’s own detailed admission, it took two blasts from a shotgun, separated by a walk back to her truck for more shells, to finish the goat off.

Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in May. The Guardian obtained a copy.

The governor’s extraordinary admission made news because she has long been seen to be auditioning to be picked for vice-president by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

On Friday, amid widespread disbelief that Noem chose to tell such a horrific story in such detail in a campaign book, most observers thought her chances of winning the Trump veepstakes were over.

Wrote Meghan McCain, a conservative pundit whose father, John McCain, in 2008 made one of the most disastrous vice-presidential picks of all time, in the form of extremist Sarah Palin: “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc – but not from killing