Newsweek, October 2024
When Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate in August, her aim was to shore up support in the Midwestern states that give her the clearest path to an Electoral College victory in November. While the battleground states are set to be extremely close, polling shows that former President Donald Trump has gained some ground in Walz’s home state in recent weeks.
Harris had been ahead of former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, by 8.4 percentage points on August 19, but her lead shrunk to 5.8 points on Monday, according to FiveThirty Eight’s average of polls. It comes as Walz has faced criticism over a string of gaffes, including recently having to walk back his comment that the Electoral College system “needs to go,” which is not the Harris campaign’s position. He later told ABC, “My position is the campaign’s position.” Walz has also misleadingly claimed he was in Hong Kong during the turbulence surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. When pressed about the comment during the recent vice presidential debate, Walz said he “misspoke.”
