In 2016, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won Michigan’s Upper Peninsula handily. It was one of a smattering of white, conservative, rural areas around the country, many of them reliably Democratic till recently, where Sanders was able to top eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Sanders’ success in these locations– also see West Virginia, Kansas, North Dakota and Little Dixie in southeastern Oklahoma– gave him delegates in his individually fight against Clinton and offered a powerful argument for the Democratic Party‘s left wing.
Over the previous four years, progressives have argued that the 2016 main results showed white working-class voters in backwoods were more prepared for Sanders’ progressive revolution than they had an interest in Clinton’s center-left incrementalism. Sanders’ supposed strength with voters in the Rust Belt and Appalachia, most of whom declined Clinton and former President Barack Obama, was at the core of the “Bernie would have won” argument from 2016.
As of 11 p.m. Eastern, he was winning every county in the Upper Peninsula. In Mackinac County, where Sanders had actually won with 55%of the vote four years previously, Biden was winning by a similar margin and was 20 percentage points ahead of Sanders. In Gogebic County, Biden had a 30- point lead over Sanders, who had won the county by 7 portion points in2016
Sanders won 57%of the rural vote in2016 Amongst white voters without a college degree, Sanders won simply 43%of the vote in 2020 after claiming 57?ck in2016
The 2020 results recommend there are significant limitations to Sanders’ attract the rural white voters who live in these areas, and that his 2016 successes might have been due as much to Clinton’s years of political baggage regarding a thirst for Sanders’ progressive policies like