The math behind why Harris picked Walz and why she may regret it

Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN

(CNN) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hadn’t been in the top tier of potential running mates for Kamala Harris until the past few weeks. But his selection to join the vice president on the Democratic ticket underscores both the power of social media and of being relatively affable and nondivisive.

So what took Walz from, nationally speaking, a relative unknown to major-party vice presidential nominee? You might just call the entire thing “weird.”

Recall how Democrats started calling Republicans Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird” a few weeks ago. The attack might have felt like something out of high school, but the crazy thing is that it seems to have worked.

A look at Google trend data reveals a recent increase in searches for the word “weird.” More than that, the topics associated with “weird” were Make America Great Again, the Republican Party, Vance and Walz.

Why Walz? He’s been credited as the first one to have started calling Republicans weird in any large-scale way.

And we know that the Harris campaign was paying attention because it fired off at least one email missive that suggested that the “weird” attacks against the Republican ticket were driving the online conversation.

The fact that Harris selected a candidate who does well online shouldn’t be surprising – this is the campaign that has embraced “coconut tree” and “brat.” Harris has also done very well on TikTok, which is something Joe Biden’s campaign couldn’t do.

But is the Walz pick indicative of a campaign that is too online?

That’s a fair question given that Harris skipped over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in favor of Walz. Shapiro, who was long seen as a front-runner for the vice presidential pick, divided a lot of the online left over his perceived views on the Israelis and Palestinians.

Notably, Walz shares many of those same views on the issue but received far less backlash than Shapiro, who is Jewish.

The fact that Walz faced virtually no opposition from any of the major Democratic Party factions almost certainly helped him. After all, the Harris campaign has been riding a wave of good emotions since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Walz’s nondivisive manner on a larger scale seemed to play on a smaller scale as well. Harris had good personal chemistry with him and particularly liked his “happy go lucky” attitude, according to CNN reporting.

Getting along with a running mate and not potentially dividing the party with the choice is reason enough to pick someone.

One of the first rules when it comes to a vice presidential pick is to “Do no harm.” Harris likely did no harm with this pick. Walz served 12 years in the US House and is currently in his second term as governor. He can’t be attacked for having little experience, unlike his Republican counterpart Vance, who is the least liked vice presidential nominee coming out of his party’s convention on record.

A selection not without risk

The big question now is whether Harris left points on the board by choosing Walz instead of Shapiro.

Minnesota is likely not going to be competitive this fall. No Republican nominee for president has carried the state since 1972 – it’s Democrats’ longest presidential winning streak (outside of Washington, DC). And polling in the North Star State since Harris entered the race has shown that the streak is likely to continue.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is almost certainly a must-win state for Harris if she wants to be president. In fact, it is probably the most important swing state this cycle, and the polling there has been very tight.

Shapiro currently holds a 61% favorable rating in Pennsylvania and outperformed Biden’s 2020 baseline by 14 points in 2022.

Whether that would have been enough to propel a Harris-Shapiro ticket in Pennsylvania this fall is a question mark, though political science literature suggests it very well could have.

What we can say, though, is that Walz is not likely to help Harris with many swing voters. He did less than a point better than Biden in Minnesota when he won reelection in 2022. In fact, Shapiro seems to have done better with White voters without a college degree in Pennsylvania than Walz did with the same demographic in his state two years ago.

And even if Walz had been an electoral juggernaut, it remains to be seen whether he can help the Democratic ticket outside his home state.

If Harris ends up losing Pennsylvania and the election by a small margin, it will be one of history’s great “what-ifs.” Did she not choose Shapiro because she was afraid of the online left?

Harris, of course, is hoping the election won’t be that close. She seems to have momentum, and the Walz pick will probably do nothing to impede it.

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