Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is bringing no home-field advantage to the Democratic ticket, as independent voters in his state favor Republican candidate Donald Trump, new polling shows.
Independent voters support Trump over Harris by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio in Walz's state, according to a MinnPost-Embold Research poll released Friday. Forty percent of independents polled say they support the former president, while only 23 percent back the Harris-Walz ticket.
Harris is still ahead of Trump overall with 48.8 percent to 44.6 percent, but her lead has shrunk from the 5-point advantage reported in a local poll two weeks ago. The data suggest that Walz’s presence on the ticket has done little to boost Harris’s support in his home state, according to the New York Post.
Harris tapped Walz as her running mate in an attempt to appeal to Midwestern voters in key swing states, branding Walz as a teacher and football coach and selling camouflage Harris-Walz hats. A Minnesota poll, however, published in August—which included more Democrats than Republican respondents—found that a staggering 34 percent of voters said the governor was a poor choice for Harris.
In 2020, President Joe Biden won Minnesota with a 7-point lead over Trump, but Hillary Clinton barely scraped by in 2016, winning the state over Trump by fewer than 45,000 votes.
The Land of 10,000 Lakes has a D+7 registration advantage and has not elected a Republican to the White House since 1972. Minnesota was the only state to vote for a Democrat against Ronald Regan in the 1984 election.