Vice President Kamala Harris‘ running mate, Tim Walz, is losing ground with rural voters, according to a new poll.
The Minnesota governor’s favorability rating was net even, according to the latest survey by Cygnal, a private polling firm that serves Republican candidates and committees. “From early-October to now, Walz’ net image has dropped from +4 to net even (45 fav, 45 unfav) – driven in part by the rural voters (-14 net fav decrease) Walz was recruited to help with,” Cygnal said in its analysis of the poll findings.
Walz is “hurting” with Democratic-leaning groups as well, Cygnal said, noting that his net favorability among college-educated women and younger women had decreased by 13 points and 17 points, respectively, since the earlier poll.
The survey was conducted among a sample of 1,507 likely voters between October 24 and 26. About 28 percent of the sample are rural voters, while half are suburban and about 20 percent are urban.
Tim Walz at a rally at Burns Park in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on October 28, 2024. A Cygnal poll found that Walz’s favorability has dropped since early October, driven partly by rural voters.
Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images
The Harris and Trump campaigns were contacted for comment via email.
Walz’s favorability was +2.4 as of Thursday, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls. Other surveys conducted in the final week of October had Walz’s favorability ranging from between +2 unfavorable and +9 favorable.
The findings come as the Harris-Walz campaign has sought to appeal to more rural voters—a voting bloc that has historically leaned toward former president Donald Trump—ahead of an election that polls show is set to be extremely close. Trump won 59 percent of rural voters in 2016, and took an even bigger share of the rural vote—65 percent—in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
But both campaigns have been courting groups beyond their bases since even small shifts in support could prove decisive in the battleground states.
Walz, who grew up in rural Nebraska, spoke about the Harris-Walz campaign’s plan for rural communities at a farm in western Pennsylvania on October 15.
“When people think rural America, farm policy matters, crop insurance matters, trade matters, tariff matters,” Walz said.”But you’re bigger than that. Your families, your health care matters, your education matters, your roads matter, your retirement matters, all those things matter.”
He said the Harris-Walz plan aims to improve rural health care, including by recruiting 10,000 new medical professionals, by permanently extending telemedicine coverage under Medicare and by increase funding for volunteer EMS programs to cut in half the number of “ambulance deserts” in the nation.
“There’s large places in America right now if you dial 911, it’s very difficult to get to an ambulance right on time,” Walz said. “Our EMTs are in short supply. We want to make sure that we’re cutting that in half, expanding telemedicine and access to affordable quality health care for everyone in every part of the county.”
