After President Donald Trump won the rust belt votes in 2016 and Democrats won them back in 2018, the blue-collar vote in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are very much in play for either party for 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"You look at the electoral map, and [President Trump] has to win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin or Michigan," a Michigan GOP political consultant Jamie Roe told the Journal. "And a Republican can’t win statewide without winning Macomb County."
Trump's economic policies give him a play in the rust belt that Republicans did not necessarily carry in the midterms.
"[Trump] won a lot of union membership last time," Roe added. "I think Trump has a lot of credibility with blue-collar workers in this area that he actually does care."
Democrats do not say the same for Hillary Clinton's failed campaign in 2016.
"I regard Clinton's loss in 2016 as basically political malpractice," former Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer told the Journal. "The loss was due to lack of attention to Michigan, and I think the same was true in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They were winnable states. The Clinton campaign took them for granted."
President Trump's 2020 campaign is not going to make that mistake in the industrial Midwest, a campaign spokesman told the Journal.