Kamala Harris risks having a problem that almost no one is talking about: it’s called Minnesota. A Kstp/SurveyUsa poll, conducted at the end of July, gave the vice president a ten-point advantage over Donald Trump. Unfortunately, another survey, again by Kstp/SurveyUsa, conducted at the end of August, saw this advantage halved, falling to just five points. This is quite worrying data for the Democratic candidate. And this for a number of reasons.
First, the second survey was conducted after the end of the Convention democraticof Chicago: this means that the event not only did not help the Harris in Minnesota but that, in fact, may have even crippled her. Secondly, the issue is all the more serious in light of the fact that the Democratic candidate, in early August, announced as her own running mateTim Walzwho is the governor of Minnesota. Logic would have therefore wanted that, by opting for him, the poll approval rating for the Democratic ticket would increase in this State. And instead it has drastically decreased. To make matters worse for the Harris the fact is that, in mid-June, Kstp/SurveyUsa attributed to Joe Bidenin Minnesota, a six-point lead: one more than the one currently held by the vice president.
The overall picture therefore gives us an interesting element: Minnesota has effectively returned to being a contestable state. Not exactly good news for the HarrisThe last Republican presidential candidate to win Minnesota was Richard Nixon back in 1972. All this, while Trump came close to conquering it in 2016, stopping less than two points behind Hillary Clinton. However, this state has voted for the Democrats in presidential elections for decades. And yet, this year, the game here seems rather wide open: one of the various symptoms of vulnerability that characterize the Harris.
On the other hand, the Democratic candidate is in trouble throughout the Rust Belt. According to the average poll of RealClearPoliticsthe advantage that the interested party currently holds in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin is much less than that enjoyed Biden and the Clinton respectively at the beginning of September 2020 and at the beginning of September 2016. It must be said that the Harris performs better, always looking at the polls with a historical perspective, in some of the key states of the Sun Belt, such as, for example, Georgia and North Carolina. It is no mystery that the vice president is doing everything to take away from Trump North Carolina itself: one of the key states that voted for him in 2020. The problem, for the Democratic candidate, however, is that, with Minnesota now contestable, the Republican challenger is also bringing the war to her home electorally. With the aggravating factor that, having Walz as vice, the Harris risks significant damage to its image in having to defend a State that seemed automatically safe.
