If you haven’t heard much about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz before Vice President Kamala Harris selected him as her running mate, you’re not alone.
A new national NPR/PBS/Marist poll released Tuesday, before Harris made her pick, showed 71% of Americans saying they’ve never heard of Walz or don’t have an opinion of him. Among those who do have an opinion, 17% viewed him favorably versus 12% who viewed him negatively.
By comparison, in the same poll, 53% said they hadn’t heard of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — the other top contender to be Harris’ running mate — while 25% viewed Shapiro favorably versus 23% who viewed him unfavorably.
That means both parties are going to be racing to introduce and define Walz over the next few weeks, as many voters see him for the first time.
Follow live as Harris and her new VP pick prepare for their first rally.
Where Walz is known, he is fairly popular. That’s in his home state of Minnesota, according to a recent Morning Consult survey of approval ratings of the nation’s 50 governors.
In that Morning Consult polling from July, 54% of registered voters in Minnesota approved of Walz’s job as governor, while 40% said they disapproved.
By comparison, Shapiro’s approval rating as Pennsylvania governor was 56% approve, 31% disapprove in the same survey.
JD Vance’s popularity has declined since his selection
While Walz isn’t well known nationally, recent polls show that Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has become less popular with the public since his selection as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.
The same NPR/PBS/Marist poll found 34% of adults viewing Vance favorably versus 43% viewing him unfavorably (a net rating of minus-9 points). A combined 23% say they haven’t heard of Vance or are unsure about him.
That’s a decline since July’s NPR/PBS/Marist poll — conducted right after Vance’s selection — which found his rating at that moment at 28% favorable, 31% unfavorable (a minus-3 net rating).
A turbulent month and a reset race
Harris’ pick of Walz as her running mate is the latest development in this increasingly turbulent presidential race, which in just the last month has seen an assassination attempt on Trump, the Republican convention and President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 campaign.
And overall, the 2024 contest has been reset — from an election Biden had been trailing after the debate, to a political environment that’s instantly improved for Democrats, though that still remains competitive, according to the public polling.
