The chunkiest of chunks face off in Alaska's Fat Bear Week

An Alaska national park's yearly celebration of the beefy, brown and bristly is getting underway as some of the chunkiest bears on the planet fatten up for their long winter slumber.

Fat Bear Week doesn't officially start at Katmai National Park and Preserve until Oct. 2, when fans can begin voting online for their favorite ursine behemoths in tournament-style brackets.

But on Tuesday organizers revealed the four cub contestants in this week's Fat Bear Jr. contest — with the “chubby champ charging on to face the corpulent competition” in the adult bracket, as Naomi Boak of the nonprofit Katmai Conservancy put it during the livestreamed announcement.

The annual contest, which drew more than 1.3 million votes last year, is way to celebrate the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The most dedicated fans watch the bears on live cameras at explore.org all summer long as they feast on sockeye salmon returning to the Brooks River.

This year's contestants for Fat Bear Jr. include some familiar muzzles: Both the 2022 and 2023 junior champs are up for a repeat; they remain eligible because they still meet the criteria for being considered a cub, including remaining with a sow. Most cubs stay with their mother for about 2 1/2 years, but the 2022 Fat Bear Jr. winner, known as 909 Jr., who has remained with an aunt, is almost 4 years old.

There's also an emotional favorite: a spring cub of Grazer, last year's Fat Bear champ. The cub's sibling died this summer after it slipped over a small waterfall on the Brooks River and was killed by a dominant adult male known as Chunk, or Bear 32 — an attack captured on the bear cams. Grazer fought Chunk in an effort to save the cub, but it later died.

Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in mid-summer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon — each eats as many as 30 fish per day — large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms). Females are about one-third smaller.

The adult contestants for the Fat Bear Week tournament will be announced Sept. 30, with voting taking place Oct. 2-8.

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 910's cub at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 13, 2024. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 909 Jr. at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 2, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 806's yearling at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 5, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 806's yearling at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 15, 2024. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 910's cub at Katmai National Park in Alaska on July 4, 2024. (T. Carmack/National Park Service via AP)

This image provided by the National Park Service shows 909 Jr. at Katmai National Park in Alaska on Sept. 12, 2024. (C. Cravatta/National Park Service via AP)

FILE - In this photo provided by the National Park Service is Grazer, the winner of the 2023 Fat Bear Contest, at Katmai National Park, Alaska on Sept. 14, 2023. (F. Jimenez/National Park Service via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, is less popular among voters than his Democratic rival, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Both Vance and Walz entered the spotlight this summer as relative political unknowns. As both running mates prepare to address a huge audience in next week's vice-presidential debate, Democrats are more positive about Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris than Republicans are about Vance and former President Donald Trump.

The findings of the new survey reinforce the challenge for the Republican presidential ticket as voting begins in more and more states.

The poll shows that negative feelings about Vance are considerably more widespread than positive opinions. About half of registered voters have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Vance, up from about 4 in 10 in late July, while around one-quarter have a somewhat or very favorable view of him, and a similar share don’t know enough to say.

Walz, by contrast, is better liked. About 3 in 10 voters have a negative view of Walz, while about 4 in 10 have a positive opinion and about 3 in 10 don’t know enough to say.

That difference in favorability extends to the candidates' bases. About 7 in 10 Democratic voters have a positive opinion of Walz, compared to about 6 in 10 Republican voters who have a favorable view of Vance.

Democratic candidates tend to receive more support from women, while Republicans perform better among men. That gap is clear in Trump and Harris' favorability numbers — but Walz is better liked than Vance among both men and women.

About 4 in 10 male and female voters have a positive view of Walz, while about 3 in 10 men and about one-quarter of women have a positive view of Vance.

Walz also has a popularity advantage over Vance among voters over the age of 60. Half of voters in this group view Walz somewhat or very favorably, while about 3 in 10 have a similar opinion of Vance.

Despite his strength over Vance in some areas, there are also some key Democratic groups where Walz still has work to do. About three-quarters of Black adults have a favorable view of Harris, while roughly half say the same about Walz. She is also viewed more positively by women; about 3 in 10 women don't know enough about Walz to have an opinion.

In general, though, neither of the vice-presidential candidates outshine Harris or Trump among major demographic groups, and they remain less well-known than the presidential nominees, even among groups that are traditionally part of each party's base. For example, about one-quarter of white voters without a college degree don't know enough to say about Vance, and around 4 in 10 voters between the ages of 18 and 29 don't have an opinion on Walz.

This means their popularity could continue to shift as their national profiles rise.

The poll of 1,771 registered voters was conducted Sept. 12-16, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for registered voters is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

This combination of images shows Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, at left in Erie, Pa., Aug. 28, 2024, and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaking at the DNC in Chicago, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo)