Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is having vice-president Mike Pence put a special emphasis on a key set of states going into the election 2020 by sending him out on the road to court suburban and religious voters and shore up the president’s base.

Pence, the second highest ranking official in the Trump administration, has been campaigning heavily in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over the last year, a sign of the importance those states hold to the Trump campaign’s re-election strategy.

Those states all went for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, surprising Democrats, and are an essential battleground for both Trump and the eventual Democratic presidential nominee in 2020.

To Republicans, Pence is an ideal liaison to key voting blocs in those three states. He’s a devout Christian and former governor of neighboring Indiana whose ties to the evangelical wing of the Republican party are famously strong. Temperamentally, he’s less bombastic than Trump but falls more toward the conservative end of the Republican party.

Over the past few weeks, Pence had made stops in all three states. Since August, he’s visited Michigan four times, Pennsylvania three times and Wisconsin twice, according to figures obtained by the Guardian.

Pence will continue to put a focus on those states over the next year, according to the Trump re-election campaign.

Trump’s re-election team feels that Pence is a potent messenger among evangelical, conservative and suburban voters in these three states. So many of Pence’s stops have been in those communities.

Republican strategists see outreach to voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as key to Trump’s re-election prospects. Rex Elsass, a veteran Republican admaker and consultant, called the trio of states “critical” for Trump. Elsass said those were the states that played a major role in Trump’s victory in 2016.

“You couldn’t have put together that list without saying, ‘Well, these are the top targeted states’ that were key to the election and key to the original election,” Elsass said.

And while Trump’s approval numbers among Republicans are high, Elsass said Pence is an ideal surrogate for the region.

“There’s no one better in terms of understanding, practicing, being the persona of midwest values than Mike Pence,” Elsass said. “It’s obvious that the best person to send to communicate your message are the people who truly share your values to the greatest extent.”

On Wednesday, Pence traveled with Trump to Michigan for a campaign rally in Calhoun county. Before that rally he headlined an event in Saginaw county, a part of Michigan where Trump barely defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

That speech represented a perfect example of the pitch Pence is offering these midwestern states. He focused on the administration’s judicial confirmations, the passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal, and the American and Michigan economy. He touched on more controversial topics like the administration’s border wall and Democrats’ “partisan impeachment effort”.

With all that, though, Pence still alluded to how winning any of these three states in 2020 is not a certainty.

“So, men and women of Michigan, I know you’ve got a great holiday season coming, and I want you to enjoy your time with family and friends, but come January 1 it’s time to go to work,” Pence said.

Unlike in 2016, all three states now have Democratic governors. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Democratic governors ousted their Republican predecessors in 2018. Recent head-to-head matchups of Trump versus one of the frontrunners in Michigan or Pennsylvania has shown the Democrat leading the incumbent president. In Wisconsin, a few polls have shown Trump leading Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg, two of the top Democratic primary contenders, in matchups.

Of the three midwestern states, Democrats see Wisconsin as the one most receptive to a hard push by Pence.

“There is a large group of cultural conservatives in Wisconsin, and the Republican party has historically done a very good job tapping into that demographic and those voters,” said a Democratic strategist and adviser to a top Wisconsin Democrat. The adviser was not authorized to speak on the record about the Trump campaign’s prospects in the state.

“No disrespect to the vice-president. But the governor of Indiana does not necessarily play all that well in Michigan or Wisconsin or Iowa,” said former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard, a Democrat. “I would be more concerned as to who we nominate for president than whether Pence would campaign in Michigan.”

That has left some Republican strategists warning that winning these states could be more difficult, even with a concerted outreach from Pence.

“I think it’s going to be far less fertile ground ultimately than it was in 2016, but where else do they have to go?” said Jeff Timmer, a Michigan-based Republican strategist. Timmer added that the fact that Trump did a rally in Michigan the night he was being impeached and Pence’s multiple visits to the the midwest illustrated how important it is for the Republicans’ prospects in 2020.

Timmer pointed to two congressional seats in Michigan that Democrats wrested from Republican control in 2018. Now Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin, both Democrats, represent those districts.

“Neither Democrat who flipped those seats in 18 did so because they ran simpatico with Trump and were gonna be Trump supporters,” Timmer said. “They did it because they ran opposite Trump, and those districts are moving rapidly away from Trump.”