Minnesota Governor and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz lost his home county in a landslide loss to President-elect Donald Trump. In Trump’s sweeping victory of the popular vote and electoral college, he also claimed 49.6 percent of the vote in Blue Earth County in Minnesota, home to Walz. Vice President Kamala Harris was only able to attain 48.3 percent of the vote in the county.
The performance was a notable improvement from the 2020 election, where President Biden decisively won the county with 51 percent of the vote compared to Trump’s 46.5 percent. However, Trump was unable to win the overall state of Minnesota, where Harris won 51.1 percent of the vote, compared to Donald Trump’s 46.9 percent.
The American Tribune previously reported on CNN covering Harris’ performance in the election, where Jake Tapper was shocked to discover that the vice president was substantially underperforming President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. “You asked are there any places that the vice president is overperforming Joe Biden in 2020, so we can show you that as well. We just bring that out here. Harris overperforming 2020,” chief national correspondent John King told Tapper.
“Literally nothing,” King emphasized. Tapper said in disbelief, “Literally not one county?” King replied, “There might be more out here on the West Coast, possibly one or two more as they finish the count here, but in the states that matter – again, I just showed you all those Trump counties – in one county in battleground Pennsylvania, she’s outperforming President Biden by 3% or more.”
In the aftermath of the election, commentators have tried to diagnose the results of the loss, where some have pointed the finger at Gov. Walz, suggesting he was a poor choice of running mate. “Tim Walz was a bad choice of running mate; Shapiro would have carried the blue wall states,” Jacqui Heinrich, senior Fox News White House correspondent said.
Prominent Democrat Lindy Li said, “People are wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket. And not only in terms of Pennsylvania. He’s a famously a moderate. So that would have signaled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was, but she went with someone actually to her left Minnesota….In the eyes of the American people, Walz was the governor who oversaw the protests.”
“She knows was a mistake was to say on The View that she couldn’t think of a single thing that she would do differently from the Biden administration,” Li added. “That was opener for her to show Americans that she’s going to get tough on the border, that she’s going to take drastic measures to bring down inflation. That was her chance. And she knew that she maybe should have were two things differently when in the next 40 minutes, she said I would appoint a Republican to the cabinet. So she walked that back a little bit.”
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Watch Tapper’s reaction to Harris vast underperformance compared to Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election here: