MSNBC data reporter Steve Kornacki said Tuesday that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota may not be able to move the needle in key states as the party’s vice-presidential nominee.
Vice President Kamala Harris chose Walz to be her running mate Tuesday morning, passing over Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Kornacki said during an appearance on “Ana Cabrera Reports” that Walz’s 2022 re-election win was similar to how President Joe Biden carried Minnesota in 2020.
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“When you look at what Tim Walz actually pulled off to get elected, to get re-elected in 2022, it’s the Biden model, demographically, regionally,” Kornacki told host Ana Cabrera. “You go county by county, there’s not much variance between how Walz did and how Biden did. Walz ran up huge numbers, look at this, this is the biggest county in the state, Hennepin County, Minneapolis here. Walz ran up huge numbers, Biden ran up huge numbers.”
“Now go into greater Minnesota, let’s take a look at, like, Stearns County here. Look, Walz lost this by 23 points. What did Biden lose it by? 23 points. And this is the kind of county, by the way, in Minnesota and across the Midwest here, that Democrats are hoping Walz will help them with,” Kornacki continued. “Look, let’s go back in time here. Once upon a time, just a dozen years ago, Democrats weren’t winning a county like this, but look, Barack Obama was able to get 43% of the vote here, basically run just over 10 points behind Mitt Romney. Obama was able to do that in a county like Stearns, and he was able to do that in counties like this all over the Midwest: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.”
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Harris leads Trump by 0.2% in a national head-to-head matchup, according to the Real Clear Polling average of polls from July 22 to Aug. 4, with Harris increasing her lead to 0.4% when Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein and independent presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are included in surveys.
“You see that fell off the cliff for Democrats with Clinton, with Biden and there’s Walz, his tally in this county, right between where Biden and Clinton’s was,” Kornacki said. “So, the Walz victory in 2022 looks like what is now a standard Democratic victory in Minnesota: Heavy reliance on the Twin Cities metro area and taking big losses in greater Minnesota.”
“The Democrats’ hope is that he’s going to appeal to the blue-collar areas in these other three states, maybe he will, but when you look at what he’s done in Minnesota, you don’t quite see that,” Kornacki said.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.