Perhaps playing Madden on Twitch with AOC isn’t the best campaign strategy after all, even for a football cosplayer like the #2 on the Democratic ticket.
That’s a takeaway from new polling of Minnesota that shows Gov. Tim Walz’s ticket may be on the verge of an improbable outcome in the vice-presidential pick’s home state, with the first potential loss for Democrats since 1972’s Richard Nixon landslide over the “acid, abortion and amnesty” campaign of the doomed George McGovern.
Roughly 24 hours after the former assistant football coach came under fire for his malapropistic mangling of a basic gridiron term by saying the lefty congresswoman from The Bronx could “run a mean Pick 6” during a stultifying 0-0 tie between the two pols (who may or may not have run every play to the left), a Minnesota Post survey finds Walz and Kamala Harris in danger of a fatal interception in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
The poll of 1,734 likely voters, conducted by Embold Research between Oct. 16 and 22, shows Harris and Walz barely ahead of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, 47.7% to 45.1%.
And independents are breaking for Trump, 36% to 27%.
The 2.6-point spread is a reduction from the September survey, which had a 4.2-point race, as if the pollsters asked the vandals who painted “Walz failed” on the governor’s mansion this month who they’d vote for.
Harris has lost 1.1 point of support month over month, while Trump has picked up 0.5, and “other” candidates have moved from 3.6% to 4.7% support.
Walz’s inclusion on the ticket isn’t striking these upper Midwestern voters as Minnesota Nice, given his middling approval numbers: 46.7% of those polled disapprove of him, while 48.9% say they still approve of their state’s chief executive as he looks for a better job on the taxpayer dime.
Walz’s Republican counterpart has cut his unfavorability in half since the September poll, with the sole vice-presidential debate apparently moving the needle for the Buckeye State senator. Vance still has a ways to go though, with 41.1% approval and 49.2% disapproval.