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By Martha McHardy
US News Reporter
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said on Thursday that he was "surprised" that he and Vice President Kamala Harris lost this year's presidential election to President-elect Donald Trump.
"In this campaign, when you ask the question: 'Are there things you could've done differently?' Since we lost, the answer is obviously yes. On this one, I did the best I could," he told local news station KSTP-TV in his first interview since the election.
He went on to admit that he thought the Harris-Walz campaign had "momentum," so he was "surprised" when they lost.
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"It felt like at the rallies, at the things I was going to, the shops I was going in, that the momentum was going our way. And it obviously wasn't at the end of time. So yeah, I was a little surprised [we lost]. I thought we had a positive message and I thought the country was ready for that," the governor added.
But despite his loss, Walz said he remains positive about the future.
"Coming back here now and having the privilege to be able to do this work feels really good. And I'm actually really looking forward to this legislative session with some different dynamics around it," he said.
Newsweek has contacted representatives of Walz and Harris for comment via email.
Before the election, polls had suggested that Harris was marginally ahead of Trump after she became the Democratic nominee when President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign in late July and endorsed his vice president. On the final day before the election, nearly every major forecaster predicted that Harris would win, with pollster Nate Silver's forecast giving her a slight edge in the Electoral College while individual polls had her leading Trump by 1 or 2 points—within the margin of error.
But ultimately, the Democrats failed to pull off a win, with Trump winning 312 Electoral College votes to Harris' 226. Trump also won the popular vote for the first time ever, winning every single swing state, and improving on his margins in all but two of the 50 states.
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Trump also picked up record levels of support from Black and Latino voters and women —who traditionally lean Democratic—while the Republicans also took control of the U.S. Senate and maintained their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Since then, Democrats have been searching for answers about why they lost, with some blaming Biden for not exiting the race sooner and others blaming the party for its failure to appeal to working class voters over Trump. In addition, others blamed the vice president for not spending enough time talking to voters face-to-face and some claimed that Democrats weren't strong enough on issues such as the U.S.-Mexico border and economic issues such as inflation, wages and the accelerating trend of wealth inequality.
Others blamed Harris for failing to listen to voters who demanded that the Biden administration end its support for Israel in its ongoing war in Gaza after Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack.
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, previously told Newsweek in statement: "It is important for Democratic and other elected officials to recognize that Vice President Harris' steep drop in support in key states compared to President Biden's 2020 victory resulted, in part, from the deep frustration and disillusionment that many young, Muslim, Arab, Black and other voters feel with the Biden-Harris administration due to its steadfast financial and military support for Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza."
He continued: "Rather than listening to the clear majority of Americans who support both a ceasefire and a suspension of weapons to Israel, Vice President Harris only struck a slightly more sympathetic tone toward Palestinians while sticking with the substance of President Biden's disastrous stance. This led to an unprecedented shift of support from Muslim, Arab and other communities who traditionally vote for Democratic presidents."
Meanwhile, some have suggested that Harris' decision to choose Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro may not have helped her.
"People are wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket," Lindy Li, a member of the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) National Finance Committee, told Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich in November.
"Not only in terms of Pennsylvania. He's famously a moderate. So that would have signaled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was,'" Li added.
It is widely believed that Harris chose Walz as her running mate to ensure the Midwestern swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin would be safely in her column. However, the Democratic ticket failed to win Michigan or Wisconsin, even though Biden narrowly won both in 2020 against Trump. Even more surprising, Minnesota shifted three points towards Trump. Harris won the state by roughly 138,000 votes, making Minnesota a real target for Republicans come 2028.
When asked if Harris' decision to choose him as her running mate was a positive or negative for the campaign, Walz told KSTP-TV that the decision to choose him as a running mate "wasn't his."
"History will write that," he said. "It wasn't my decision to make. It was the vice president's decision."
Walz also said on Thursday that he'll "miss the excitement" of the campaign trail and being Harris' second-in-command. He also recounted when the vice president first introduced him as her running mate during an event at Temple University in Philadelphia.
"And then I'm standing at the curtain with the vice president of the United States with 15 or 20,000 people in the national press out there," he recounted. "And she turns to me, and she says, 'Well, let's not screw this up' and we went out there."
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