Vice President Kamala Harris tried to define Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz by his Midwestern background, but polling numbers show that the VP pick is far from guaranteed to bring in the key demographic of heartland voters who clamor to former President Donald Trump’s rallies.
Harris highlighted his family-orientated approach in an appeal to swing more swing voters to her side on Tuesday in their first appearance together – choosing the friendly “coach” over a rhetorical firebrand like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro who she reportedly feared could upstage her.
But Walz, according to polling numbers, doesn’t particularly resonate with the the large swaths of midwestern voters. Just 90 days out from Election Day, most voters across the nation don’t know who he is.
In Minnesota, he mostly won over the typical Democrat counties around the Twin Cities and the northern tip – but didn’t expand his reach to the majority of the rural counties in the state.
Walz first came into gubernatorial power in 2018 by having large majorities in counties that usually vote Democrat, but did breakthrough in some more rural counties like Beltrami county and Koochiching county in the north of the state and Mower, Freeborn and Houston counties in the south.
By 2022, his majority there had dwindled to almost the same exact counties that voted for President Biden in 2020, indicating that he resonated with the same pockets of the state that are liberal strongholds.
Harris had the possibility of choosing direct battleground leaders to join her ticket such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who could have mobilized more voters to come out in those states.
Winning over the Midwest will be critical in November, but Walz will have to work harder to get his name and record across to neighboring states than Shapiro and Kelly would have had to do in their own key states.
Biden narrowly won both Wisconsin and Michigan in 2020 and retained Minnesota. Former President Donald Trump’s VP pick Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is also building his image around being Midwestern, complicating things further for Walz.
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In Philadelphia on Tuesday, Vance argued that most voters will be deciding based on who is at the top of the ticket. But Walz, he said, allowed “rioters to burn down their businesses” in Minnesota during the George Floyd riots in 2020.
He also said the only similarity between him and Walz is that they’re “white guys from the Midwest.”
But the campaign is trying. The Harris-Walz campaign has already rolled out a camouflage hat and Harris leaned heavily into Walz’s story on stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday, calling him “a son of the Nebraska plains who grew up working on a farm.”
Walz will also have to work to build up his name recognition outside of Minnesota. One recent NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll shows that 71% of voters don’t know enough about him to form an opinion.
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Only 17% of Midwestern voters surveyed said they approved of him, while 16% disapproved and 67% said they didn’t know.
Out of those who approved of him, he polled particularly well with “big city” voters and white college educated voters – the same demographics that usually vote Democrat.
Both Shapiro and Kelly have larger name recognition that Walz, according to polling numbers, with 25% of Midwestern voters approving of the Arizonan and 18% supporting the Pennsylvanian.
The Trump campaign is working to define Walz by his “far-left” and “radical” record, especially stressing him overseeing the Minneapolis riots after George Floyd’s death in 2020, his support of transgender ideology and his appreciation for China.
“Tim Walz is just as dangerously liberal as Kamala Harris. The opposition research book on Radical Liberal Tim Walz is deep and we look forward to exposing it every day for the next 90 days,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told The Post.
Harris’ campaign did not respond to an inquiry from The Post.
