Harris VP pick: Here’s how Americans feel about Walz

Update 10:40 a.m. EDT: Vice President Kamala Harris officially announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday. Harris said in a post on X that Walz has “delivered for working families like his.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has officially announced her pick for running mate and many Americans don’t know much about him, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
About 7 in 10 Americans say they don’t know Gov. Tim Walz well enough to have a positive or negative opinion of him.
READ MORE: 5 things to know about Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ VP pick
Given the breakneck pace of American politics lately, the Democratic ticket has enough time to make an impression in the 90-some days left before Election Day, Republican strategist Olivia Troye said.
Here’s how Americans see a few of the veepstakes names that were in consideration.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has served in the military and as an educator, though right now he might be best known nationally for calling Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, “weird.” Overall, few Americans appear to know much about him, according to this latest poll.
Chart by Jenna Cohen/PBS News
WATCH: Minnesota Gov. Walz says GOP ‘playing with fire’ by ‘demonizing’ Harris
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., has been to space. Could he now reach the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue? Kelly performed the best of the Democratic VP candidates considered in this poll.
Among the Americans who have heard of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, opinions were fairly split.
Since late July, when Biden left the 2024 race, Harris’ favorability has increased 6 percentage points. Her unfavorability has also risen.
The difference between those with favorable impressions versus unfavorable impressions — 2 percentage points — falls within the margin of error.
According to Troye, the past couple of weeks alone – an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life, President Joe Biden leaving the race – have shown just how dynamic American politics can be.
“It’s a completely different election” now, Troye said.
WATCH: A look at Kamala Harris’ legal career and political record
Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko said Harris’ team is running a campaign with “gloves off” and they are systematically responding to Trump’s attacks during rallies and interviews.
Parkhomenko said “The party is more united behind her than I’ve seen” in terms of getting behind whomever Harris thinks is the right choice for her running mate.
He expects the American public to get interested in the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Harris and other prominent members of her party will share their agenda later this month.
“We’ll see the [poll] numbers change coming out of there,” Parkhomenko said.
Enthusiasm for Trump appears to have fallen since late July, despite the former president’s harrowing experience surviving a deadly shooting at a campaign rally, followed immediately by a national convention where allies, former rivals and celebrities cast their support for him with unfettered fervor.
Troye said she thinks there’s a larger portion of the Republican voting base that is moderate and doesn’t identify with the MAGA movement.
More people now know who Ohio Sen. JD Vance is compared to last month, but that isn’t a wholly positive development for his candidacy.
In the weeks since Trump named Vance as his running mate, the politician and author’s past words have come back to haunt him, including a 2021 interview on Fox News where he said that women like Harris who have not given birth “are childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives.”
“The more that America gets of JD Vance, the more they seem to not like him,” Parkhomenko said.
PBS News, NPR and Marist Poll conducted a survey on Aug. 1 through 4 that polled 1,613 U.S. adults with a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points, 1,513 registered voters with a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, 1,309 registered voters who definitely plan to vote in November’s general election with a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points and 717 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents with a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.