LANSING – In the most stunning upset of the 2016 presidential election cycle thus far, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont won the Michigan Democratic primary on Tuesday in a tightly contested race over former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Virtually every expectation and virtually every poll showed Clinton winning the Michigan primary, and by handy margins. One poll days before Election Day showed her winning the state’s Democrats by better than 30 percent.

Speaking to a crowd outside Michigan approximately one hour before most media outlets called the race for him, Sanders even seemed surprised. He would not declare victory, but he thanked the “people of Michigan who repudiated the polls,” as well as “repudiating the pundits who said Bernie Sanders wasn’t going anywhere.”

And one of the early reactions to the surprising results from a number of observers was that polling in Michigan dramatically and completely failed. Virtually every poll or survey showed Clinton winning with double-digit leads. One of the few that did not, the State of the State Survey from the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, still showed Clinton winning, but by just 5 percentage points, and that was within the margin of error.

With 99 percent of the state’s precincts counted, Sanders was leading Clinton, 589,327 to 569,524, or 49.9 percent to 48.2 percent.

Clinton, according to Associated Press tallies, won Wayne County by almost 58,000 votes with not quite all the precincts reporting. She won Oakland County by more than 8,000 votes, but struggled in Macomb County with a margin of more than 1,000 votes.

In a Democratic primary, where the Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties tend to hold sway, a roughly 65,000-vote margin should be a recipe to win statewide.

But Sanders won a tsunami of victories in 73 of the state’s 83 counties. While many of the rural counties had small turnouts compared to the number of Republicans voting, their numbers gave him a significant lead early in the counting.

His margins were huge – 25 percent in Kent County, 11 percent in Ingham, 12 percent in Washtenaw, 22 percent in Kalamazoo, 12 percent in Jackson, 17 percent in Saint Clair, 19 percent in Van Buren, 31 percent in Grand Traverse, 26 percent in Marquette.

Geographically, Sanders seemed to score best along the I-94 corridor from Ypsilanti westward and in the U.S. 131 corridor in western and northern Michigan. The counties on the eastern side of the state were closer.

Michigan is the largest state to have gone for Sanders, who had previously won in New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine, Kansas and Colorado.

It is the first state Sanders has won with a substantial African-American vote. Even as Clinton trailed early Tuesday, it seemed once cities like Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Saginaw and Muskegon reported their votes, she would come back. The margin tightened, but not by enough.

There were signs of a shift late to Sanders in Wayne County. While Clinton won a whopping 76 percent of absentee ballots cast, she won just 56 percent among those who voted at the polls on election day.

Some exit polls showed younger voters supported Sanders by a nearly 4-1 margin. Voters over 65 years old backed Clinton by a better than 2-1 margin.

Despite the polls leading up to the election projecting a big win for Clinton, T.J. Bucholz, CEO of Vanguard Public Affairs, said her campaign’s own actions suggested she realized it would be a tougher race.

“Clinton spent a lot of time on the ground in the last several days, the president (former President Bill Clinton) was here, her daughter was here, perhaps that indicates their internal polling was showing it was a closer race,” he said.

During the two candidates’ debate in Flint on Sunday, Clinton landed a major body blow on Mr. Sanders when she said he voted against the legislation that bailed out the domestic auto industry. Tuesday night, some observers said that might have been launched because she saw it would be a tougher race.

In a speech she gave in Ohio, Clinton did not speak much about the Michigan election, but said the campaign with Sanders had been what a campaign should be: focused on issues and not personalities.

The Sanders win is also in keeping with surprises that Michigan voters have shown in presidential primaries. That includes former Alabama Governor George Wallace’s win in 1972, George H.W. Bush’s win over then-candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980, Jesse Jackson stunning voters with a win in the 1988 primary and John McCain’s victory over George W. Bush in 2000.

Some Democrats also said the results suggested smart tactics from the Sanders campaign in piling up big margins outstate and conversely a major gaffe by the Clinton operation in assuming the Detroit area would carry her to victory.

In his speech, Sanders said the results showed that the public was fed up with a “corrupt campaign finance system” and a “rigged economy” that rewards the wealthy while the middle class are losing ground.

“It’s been a fantastic night in Michigan and I’m very grateful for the support we have gotten in that state,” he said.

Bucholz said the results show that Clinton has some work to do. She still has high negatives with voters, and she must do a better job of connecting with younger voters. The Michigan results, he said, are “indicative of a larger issue for Clinton.”

This story was published by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com