Poll Shows GOP Efforts to Smear Tim Walz Aren’t Working

There’s a lot to think about in the latest national news NBC News pollBut one of the questions that stood out to me was about positive evaluations.

Participants were asked to express their feelings about various important public figures and institutions, and only three people positive ratings were higher than negative ratings:

Tim Walz: 40% positive, 33% negative

Taylor Swift: 33% positive, 27% negative

Kamala Harris: 48% positive, 45% negative

Of course, these numbers don’t add up to 100% because some people either didn’t have an opinion either way or didn’t know the person mentioned in the poll. What’s more, the Democratic vice president’s positive numbers were striking, partly because They improved significantly as voters begin to see and hear more of him.

But I was also amazed by the level of support Walz gave me.

After the Minnesota governor joined his party’s national ticket early last month, his Republican opponents did what everyone expected: The GOP tried to smear Walz in ugly ways. In one particularly ugly example, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appeared on Fox News and suggested It is “very possible” that China has been “preparing” the Democrats for decades.

This was ridiculous, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. As regular readers, can rememberSlander on Walz’s military service ugly and wrong; Somali flag story was stupid; tampon story has been worse; and almost every line of attack the GOP has put forth has proven to be bad too false or exaggerated.

But the evidence also suggests that these attacks don’t work. There’s still a segment of Walz who is unfamiliar, but among those who know the Minnesotan, he’s well-received.

The same cannot be said for his Republican counterpart.

Senator J.D. Vance, who joined his party’s national ticket a few weeks before Harris took over for Walz, struggled For the last few weeks weak questionnaire numbersAnd NBC News poll wasn’t much better: 32% gave the Ohioan a positive rating, while 45% gave him a negative rating.

There is no one polled who ranks lower than Vance.

Of course, it could have been worse for the senator: NBC News poll We also asked about Project 2025, and it was at the bottom of the results: 4% positive, 57% negative.

(Click on the link to learn about the survey’s methodology. The margin of error is plus/minus 3.1 points.)