President Donald Trump’s campaign operatives and other allies have begun surveying the political landscape for his 2020 reelection bid, viewing a handful of upcoming midterm races as especially insightful to his strategic path three years from now.

There’s been a flurry of activity in those states in recent weeks. Aides from Trump’s 2016 effort have signed on to work campaigns in Ohio and Florida, giving them footholds in two essential battleground locations. Trump himself has repeatedly returned to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan, the quartet of Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states that helped propel him to victory.


And on multiple occasions in recent months, Trump has welcomed Republican committee chairmen from politically powerful states like Iowa, Virginia, Arizona and North Carolina into the Oval Office for sit-down conversations about local problems, wishes and upcoming races.

The stepped-up attention to 2020 is partly a recognition that dozens of Democrats are already seriously eyeing presidential runs of their own. But it’s also a reflection of the near-obsession with keeping Trump’s base voters on his side — a mind-set that permeates the White House, said multiple Republican operatives and lawmakers.

What’s unclear to Trump-backing Republicans: the degree to which the president’s base support in the industrial Midwest is waning or holding fast; whether the young minority voters who failed to show up for Hillary Clinton after supporting Barack Obama will return to the next Democratic nominee; and whether the power of Trump’s political celebrity is wearing off.

They also don’t know whether Democrats are at risk of losing unexpected battlegrounds that were closer than expected in 2016, or whether Hispanic voters will turn in greater numbers against the president after four years of hearing about deportation forces and a border wall.

Here are five of the 2017 and 2018 races that Trump operatives and allies expect will begin to answer these questions in the run-up to 2020:

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VIRGINIA GOVERNOR

Is Virginia even a swing state anymore? That’s the central question in this year’s governor’s race, which pits Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam against former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

Not one poll has shown Gillespie ahead in the race, one year after Clinton won Virginia by 6 percentage points — a closer-than-expected margin in a state with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators and that’s voted for the Democratic nominee in three straight presidential contests. To make matters worse for the president’s party, undecided voters appear to be tacking toward Northam as the president’s approval drops even further in the state — it’s at 35 percent, according to a late September poll.

The race is likely the only competitive statewide contest of 2017, which has both parties eyeing it as a testing ground for Trump-era politics, especially in the wake of this summer’s deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. If Gillespie — a hero of the GOP establishment who narrowly escaped a Trump-inspired challenge in the primary — can pull out a win, Republicans believe the state could still be in play come 2020.

Gillespie would likely need to fire up Trump-supporting rural voters who have been skeptical of him, so he’s tried tacking toward the president with campaign hires and ads warning of dangerous immigrant gangs. He’s also tried yoking himself to Vice President Mike Pence, hoping the conservative talisman might energize Republicans who are turned off by Trump.

“With Trump, he’s so volatile that the environment Ed’s running in can turn on a dime,” warned former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 2013. “It would be un-Ed to tack aggressively in any particular direction. He will do his best, in my humble opinion, to not stiff-arm the president."

But for Gillespie to win, the liberal suburban voters of Northern Virginia who detest Trump — as well as minority voters who have yet to be energized by Northam’s candidacy — likely would have to turn out in low numbers. That’s why Northam is expected to bring in former President Barack Obama before November’s vote.

“We are truly a swing state and went blue for Hillary — the only Southern state that went for Hillary — so there are a lot of people looking at the state to see where we’re going,” said Terry McAuliffe, the outgoing governor, who himself might challenge Trump in 2020 — especially if Virginia continues its trend toward the Democratic column.

FLORIDA SENATE

Trump’s 2016 victory in Florida was by just 1.2 percentage points, so next year’s contest likely pitting one of his top allies — Gov. Rick Scott — against third-term Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson will send a clear signal about whether the state is trending toward or away from him.

Trump’s victory was powered largely by higher-than-expected turnout among white voters in the Florida Panhandle and suburbs around the state, and the two-term governor’s candidacy would provide a clear opportunity to test whether that surge will appear against a candidate other than the widely distrusted Clinton.

Since Nelson has long been thought to be particularly strong among those very voters in the northern part of the state, this contest will provide evidence to Trump’s team about whether it needs to recalibrate its 2016 model.

It will also test whether Hispanic voters in South Florida who turned out in record numbers in 2016 will still be energized against a Trump-like Republican, especially given that they’re not traditionally Nelson’s core backers.

Then there is the issue of the hurricane politics that will also color the equation as the state recovers from a brutal season in which Scott’s — and Trump’s — management of the preparation and recovery efforts will be rewarded or punished.

While Trump narrowly won the Orlando area last year, the city’s already booming Democratic-leaning Puerto Rican population is expected to explode even more in the wake of the island’s hurricane-driven devastation.

That anticipated influx of thousands of Puerto Ricans to the state could be good news for Democrats. Democrats are expecting to use the president’s moves to end the Deferred Action for Childhool Arrivals program protecting young undocumented immigrants and his insistence that a border wall be constructed against him among Hispanic voters. Trump's allies hope his moves to tighten restrictions on Cuban travel help him among the Cuban-American population in the Miami area.

PENNSYLVANIA SENATE

Rep. Lou Barletta’s challenge to two-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey is the clearest Trump analog in the country.

Barletta, who has said he turned down a Cabinet job, isn’t just a close Trump ally. He’s also a longtime immigration hard-liner. He will likely have to follow Trump’s unorthodox geographic path through the state to have a chance against Casey, laying out a clear test of whether Trump’s narrow win can be replicated.

For Barletta, that would entail relying on Northeastern industrial counties like Luzerne — which switched from supporting Obama to Trump in 2016. A significant part of GOP Sen. Pat Toomey’s 2016 squeaker, for example, was his ability to hold down his losses in the populous Philadelphia suburbs.

Like Trump, Barletta will likely stay away from that area while Casey camps out there, harping on Barletta’s immigration stances and ties to Trump to drive up progressive, suburban and Hispanic turnout.

Clinton, after all, outpaced Trump in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburban counties by a greater than 2-to-1 margin, even as voter turnout dropped in the strongly Democratic city itself. Trump ended up winning the state by just 0.7 points.

Democrats are skeptical that Barletta, who is little known across the state, can blaze the same path as Trump, who won the first GOP presidential victory in the state since 1988.

“It isn’t replicable, for two reasons,” said former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, the only politician to have beaten Casey in a statewide race. “No. 1, Barletta is no Trump. He’s not going to get people who never voted before to pour out of their homes to vote. No. 2, if Trump ran against Hillary again today, he’d lose to her by 5 points.”

But if Barletta were able to convince Trump voters to back him in sufficient numbers, it might be a sign that the president’s 2016 Pennsylvania win was no one-off — and that his 2020 path could run through Pennsylvania again.

MICHIGAN SENATE

Just as in Pennsylvania, where Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to win in nearly 30 years, there are questions about whether the president’s 2016 Michigan performance was a one-off victory.

The prospect of a take-no-prisoners, celebrity GOP Senate candidacy in Michigan two years later could answer those questions.

Musician Robert Ritchie — aka Kid Rock — has teased a run against Sen. Debbie Stabenow in a state where Trump parlayed a coalition of new voters, Republicans and former Democrats into a razor-thin 0.3-point win.

GOP Rep. Fred Upton is also considering a run, but a Ritchie candidacy would clarify whether working-class white voter blocs like Macomb County intend to stick with the president and his political allies. (Ritchie is already viewed less favorably than Stabenow among Michigan voters, according an NBC News/Marist survey.)

“Could it happen? Yeah, it could. What I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody knows at this point, is how does an unconventional candidate like that appeal in my more conventional area?” Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga asked this summer, shortly after seeing a Kid Rock for Senate sign for the first time in conservative western Michigan.

“There were some folks who were less comfortable with President Trump. How do the little old ladies running the Right to Life phone bank feel about making calls to get out the vote for Kid Rock?”

Even if those voters rallied behind Ritchie, Republicans would likely need a repeat of the depressed metropolitan turnout among African-Americans that plagued Clinton — and Stabenow is now likely to focus on such populations in Detroit and Flint, which could provide a road map for Democrats’ 2020 presidential nominee.

MINNESOTA GOVERNOR

The idea that Minnesota — progressive hotbed, the lone state to vote against Ronald Reagan’s reelection, a state that hasn’t backed a Republican presidential nominee since Richard Nixon — could be a swing state in 2020 sounds far-fetched.

But it may not be as crazy as it sounds after Trump lost it to Clinton by a surprisingly close 1.5 points, the state’s closest margin in a presidential race since homer Walter Mondale squeaked to victory in 1984. The race to replace retiring Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton is shaping up as a test of whether Republicans can once again expand their support among the working-class white men who formed the backbone of Trump wins across the Midwest.

If Trump’s appeal among Midwesterners is going to grow, the governor’s race in Minnesota would be a leading indicator. Three of the past six Minnesota governors were Republicans, including one-time presidential prospect Tim Pawlenty, who is rumored to be considering another bid.

Trump’s surprisingly narrow losing margin in 2016 resulted from a surge of turnout in central Minnesota, while the liberal Twin Cities and the state’s traditionally Democratic Iron Range saw a slight dip overall. He took 19 counties that Obama had previously carried, and won easily in largely rural congressional districts represented by Democratic Reps. Rick Nolan and Tim Walz — the latter of whom is now running for governor.

If Trump is going to compete for Minnesota in 2020, his allies expect to see signs of GOP traction in the pro-union Iron Range, which bucked its decades-long practice of backing Democrats last November.

But Democrats will focus heavily on winning those voters back, as well as pumping up turnout in the progressive strongholds that were turned off by 2016’s matchup. If they’re successful, Trump’s chances of putting Minnesota in play will seem very slim.

Worth watching: In a state that went easily for Bernie Sanders over Clinton in the Democratic primary, nearly one in 10 Minnesotans voted for a third-party candidate in 2016. But that option may prove less appealing to voters in 2018, which could benefit the Democratic nominee.