Steve Kornacki: Tim Walz's election results don't show a clear blue-collar boost

Vice President Kamala Harris' tactical calculation with her running mate pick is that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz could provide a decisive boost in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — three states that, if Democrats can hold on to them, would make their ticket highly likely to win.

One of the Democrats’ chief challenges in those states is in blue-collar and small-town areas, where the party once ran competitively (or at least respectably) before the floor fell out amid and after Donald Trump’s emergence in 2016. The thinking is that Walz’s story and style will be relatable and reassuring to some of those voters, blunting at least part of the Trump GOP’s newfound dominance.

There’s a catch, though: Walz wasn’t able to do that himself in his last campaign.

Demographically, Minnesota has substantial overlap with Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All feature large white voting populations defined by massive splits along class lines — with college-educated white voters becoming more Democratic and white voters without four-year degrees becoming more Republican. The reason Minnesota hasn’t attained battleground status like the three others is that it has a higher share of the college-educated, Democratic-friendly cohort.

Walz won his 2022 re-election bid 52%-44% over his Republican foe. That’s virtually the same as the 52%-45% margin Joe Biden carried the state by in 2020.

Walz put up those numbers in a worse year for Democrats, to be sure. But did he attain that 52% with a different coalition from Biden’s — one less skewed toward the well-educated Twin Cities area, with broader support in the small cities and towns of Greater Minnesota? If he did, it would buttress the notion that he has a strong and unique connection with