Joe Biden’s dominant victory in the Michigan primary shows Democratic voters in the critical battleground state have picked their man to take on President Donald Trump.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is officially an independent in Congress, couldn’t pull off a repeat of his surprise 2016 Michigan victory against Hillary Clinton, despite launching an aggressive final campaign drive that featured several well-attended rallies. Biden’s campaign had a quiet presence in Michigan for much of the primary, but Democrats rallied around him in the last week of the election, catapulting the former vice president to his significant electoral triumph.

Adrian Hemond, partner and CEO of political consulting firm Grassroots Midwest, said the result of Tuesday’s election is an encouraging sign for Democrats who desperately want to oust Trump in November. Hemond said Biden appears to have performed well among key constituencies Democrats will need to win in the general election, including African Americans, college-educated white women and less-educated working-class white voters.

“It looks like in these primary states that Joe Biden is putting together the makings of a winning coalition," Hemond said. “Democratic primary voters have spoken. They think that Joe Biden is their best chance to beat Trump and hold the Congress and maybe flip the Senate.”

Read more on MLive: 2020 Michigan Presidential Primary election results

Biden won big across Michigan, making a statement about his electability and exposing Sanders’ weakness in the general election.

Much of the Democratic primary has been focused on which candidate can win back Michigan and other Midwest battleground states that swung for Trump in 2016. Biden argued his relationships with Michigan’s blue-collar auto workers and African American voters will be enough to bring the state back to the Democratic Party.

“I can win Michigan,” Biden said during a Detroit campaign stop in July 2019. “They know me, I’ve worked my whole life, I come from the middle class. I understand what’s going on. I will win Michigan, I promise you that.”

Biden’s guarantee seemed in doubt early in the race, as the campaign had struggled to find its footing among a crowded Democratic primary field. Biden said himself in Detroit Monday that “the press and the pundits had declared this campaign dead" after disappointing finishes in the first three contests.

Polls of Michigan voters before the March 3 Super Tuesday elections consistently showed Sanders leading. His supporters spent years building grassroots networks in anticipation of the 2020 election and Sanders ramped up his campaign presence Michigan long before Biden turned his attention here.

But Biden’s strong performance in South Carolina, particularly his ability to capture the unilateral support of African American voters, sparked the beginning of a dramatic turnaround. Biden’s moderate rivals dropped out to endorse him before Super Tuesday, where he won nine of 14 available states and set the stage for a competitive race in Michigan.

The departure of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., last week assured a two-man race in Michigan. Sanders made it clear in his campaign stops that the election would be a choice between his “revolution” versus the Democratic establishment.

Biden gathered the support of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other high-profile Democrats when he hit the ground in Michigan. Hemond said the story of the last week is pretty simple.

“The Democratic Party was coalescing around the Democratic candidate,” he said.

Sanders bested Clinton with 50% of the vote in 2016. He only earned 38% of the vote on Tuesday, according to unofficial election night results.

Biden won nearly every county in Michigan, sitting behind Biden by only 2 votes in Ingham county as of 1 a.m. Wednesday morning. The primary was called by the Associated Press one hour after polls closed in Michigan, with Biden pulling ahead by a 15 percentage point margin.

The Michigan primary results show Sanders’ 2016 victory had more to do with Clinton’s infamy than Sanders’ popularity, said Mark Grebner, a Democratic strategist who founded Practical Political Consulting in East Lansing. Ultimately, Grebner said Democrats just consider Biden more electable in November.

“All of us ordinary liberals have been kind of confused about what to do and suddenly we found out what to do, it was a guy named Joe,” Grebner said. “Bernie could never have been the right answer because Bernie is unfit as a candidate. I don’t mean that his positions are wrong or he’s dishonest or anything, but he’s the kind of thing that gives actual serious voters the willies because he’d be likely to lose.”

Biden trounced Sanders throughout the state, particularly in Michigan’s most populous counties. Biden won Wayne County by 14 points, took Oakland County by 22 points and won Macomb County by 16 points.

Hemond said Sanders clearly has “hardcore supporters" and a strong relationship with voters under 30 in particular, but he doesn’t do well with traditional Democratic constituencies.

“He does way better with men than with women, but a lot more of the Democratic primary electorate is women, in particular black women, a constituency he does terribly with,” Hemond said. “If you want to be the Democratic nominee for president you have to have a plan to get a substantial amount of support from black voters. (Sanders) got away with it last time because Clinton was so unpopular with wide swaths of white voters. He kind of got a pass on needing to really court significant support in the black community and he did not get that pass this time.”

Matt Grossman, head of the political science department at Michigan State University, said Biden mounted “an amazing comeback.” Biden appeared to pick up most of the voters who backed other candidates while Sanders’ support hit a plateau.

“I don’t think that Sanders lost a lot of support, it just turned out that was near his support maximum and so once everybody else dropped out they all seemed to go to Biden,” Grossman said.

Biden also seems to do better with college-educated white women living in suburban communities surrounding Detroit, Hemond said. He said the “emerging new Democratic constituency” has been fleeing the Republican party in droves during the last few election cycles.

“Their motivation to vote is through the roof right now," he said. "Democrats are very unhappy with the Trump presidency and they have been since 2016. That’s ardor seems not to have cooled. It’s lot of what powered the results of the 2018 election. That enthusiasm doesn’t seem to have waned.”

Hemond said the Sanders campaign had an “insurgent theory” of its electoral prospects, believing it could mobilize young voters and disaffected voters along with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Sanders’ Tuesday losses in Idaho, Michigan and Missouri put the future of his campaign into question.

“It’s over for all intents and purpose,” Grossman said. “People can run as long as they want and voters in later states feel left out if they don’t have a race, but in terms of a path to the nomination, there’s not really one for Sanders.”

John Sellek, CEO of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs, said Biden’s win in Michigan doesn’t mean he earned a mandate to win the general election.

“Instead of winning by simply saying he is not Bernie, he must now build the campaign infrastructure he lacks and, more importantly, a durable message detailing what he would do as president that can consistently survive the eight-month slog to Election Day we are about to commence,” Sellek said. “His track record on that front has not been great so far.”

Biden presented himself as a healing figure who would join with his past foes to unite Michigan’s Democrats and defeat Trump in November. He implored Sanders’ supporters to join him, saying “there is a place in our campaign for each of you."

“Winning means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger,” Biden said Tuesday. “It means having a president who not only knows how to fight but knows how to heal.”

Sanders tried to crack Biden’s support by criticizing his vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement. The attacks seemed to have little effect, but it’s a line of criticism Trump and his allies have already picked up.

Biden’s win in Michigan is a huge boost for his campaign. Grebner said Democrats are breathing easier now that Biden is holding a sizable lead in the delegate count.

“In the fall the question is not going to be about Joe at all,” Grebner said. “That’s the real goal for Democrats, is to not have it be about our candidate. It’s really about (Trump) p***y-grabbing, and being in cahoots with Putin, and being a 'stable genius,’ and not having a clue of what he’s talking about, being a liar and stealing money from people. You know, just the whole Trump thing.”

Read more on MLive:

2020 Michigan Presidential Primary election results

Biden breaks through Sanders strongholds, and more takeaways from Michigan’s presidential primary

Two weeks ago Bernie Sanders was the front-runner. Now he’s the underdog in ‘must-win’ Michigan