MI stays blue in every presidential election, 1992 to present. In 2020 it goes Democratic by 5 points, maybe 6. It is a tilt or lean Democratic state.
WI goes blue in 1988, 1992 and 1996 but red in both 2000 and 2004. In 2008 and 2012 it goes blue. In 2016, however, it votes red, and the Upper Peninsula makes it three to four points more conservative, and it goes red by 4-5 points. In 2020 it stays red but by 3 points.
Overall MI would be a tilt or maybe lean Democratic state while WI would be a lean Republican state.
Is this based on the real results or does it account for the campaigns being conducted differently?
Neither. It's actually me guestimating the level of political clout held by the Upper Peninsula. I imagine it'd shift the race a few points to the right since its total population is that of half a congressional district (and Wisconsin has eight). Yes, campaigns would be conducted differently, and that may marginally alter the margins, but I think Wisconsin would be, in this scenario, a fairly reddish state in 2020, while MI would be blue. Mathematically, MI voted for Biden by 2.78%, and if you were to discount the ballots from the Upper Peninsula and only calculate the results in the Lower Peninsula, Biden's margin expands to 3.43% of the two-way vote share (I used the Elections Shuffler to check this). Specifically, in the Lower Peninsula, Biden garnered 2,735,791 votes, and Trump got 2,554,501. So, since the Upper Peninsula doesn't have quite as much political infleunce as I guessed, I'll fix my prior post.
