Washington (CNN) — Call it location, location, location.

The White House announced Friday that Vice President Joe Biden will speak Monday at an AFL-CIO Labor Day event in Cincinnati, Ohio. The news comes a week and a half after the White House announced that President Barack Obama would speak in Michigan at a Labor Day event sponsored by the Metro Detroit Central Labor Council.

What do both states have in common? They are both states that the Obama-Biden ticket won in the 2008 presidential election which could be challenging to keep in the Democratic column in next year’s presidential contest.

The state narrowly went for the Democrats in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and Obama and Biden took Michigan by 16 percentage points in ’08. But Republicans performed well in the state in last year’s midterm elections, winning back the governor’s office and two House seats from the Democrats. And the most recent polls in the state indicate that the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent.