It’s hard to overstate the importance of Bernie Sanders’ win in Michigan yesterday. FiveThirtyEight, who had previously given Hillary Clinton had a 99% chance of winning the state, described the win “as one of the greatest upsets in modern political history.”

While the pundits were no doubt shocked by the outcome, it probably comes as a bit less of surprise to people who have paid close attention to the polls and the way the media has covered Sanders’ campaign over the course of the primary season.

In Facebook post on Monday night, I noted that I did not necessarily expect Bernie to win Michigan outright, but that I thought a win was possible, and that the outcome would probably be much closer than the polling had suggested.

Although I was raised in a factory town in southeast Michigan, I can’t claim to have had a special insight into what Michigan voters were thinking. However, it seemed obvious to me that there were many signs pointing to the fact that support for Sanders was increasing — and signs of impending Clinton weakness — that the media echo chamber had almost universally ignored.

The pollsters were wrong… again

Polls conducted in Michigan had shown Secretary Clinton winning the state by anywhere between a 10 and 30 point margin. But anyone who has taken a close look at how the polling has fared thus far, would have realized that polling has not consistently told the full story.

A good example is Massachusetts, where FiveThirtyEight’s polling model predicted a 94% chance that Clinton would win. While technically Clinton did win the state, the margin was so narrow that the candidates nearly split the delegates down the middle (46 for Clinton, 45 for Sanders).

On the other end, some of the other polling discrepancies have gone in Clinton’s favor, where she has done better than expected in a string of southern states (more on that in a minute).

However, one of the macro issues is that most of the polling has somehow ended up concentrated in the states where Clinton has done well, while many of the states that Bernie won have received little or no polling.

The model that FiveThirtyEight uses to project state by state wins and loses depends on polling data within each state, so they only make a projection in states where a sufficient number of polls have been conducted.

FiveThirtyEight has correctly predicted wins for Clinton in all 11 states that she has won so far — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, Louisiana, Virginia, Nevada, and Mississippi.

But out of the 9 states that Bernie has won, FiveThirtyEight has correctly predicted wins in only two — Vermont, and New Hampshire. FiveThirtyEight wrongly predicted Clinton would win in Oklahoma and also Michigan. But in five other states — Minnesota, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine — they did not have enough polling data to make a projection at all. (Insert your own conspiracy theory here.)

Thus far, FiveThirtyEight has predicted 13 wins for Clinton (who won 11) while predicting only two for Bernie (who has won nine). This has unfortunately reinforced the “inevitability” narrative by making it seem that “Hillary Clinton is leading in all of the polls.” A more accurate statement might be that all of polls are in states where Hillary Clinton is leading.

The media overemphasizes Sanders’ weakness with minorities while ignoring Clinton’s weakness outside of the south.

The media has consistently harped on Sanders for his weakness with black (and to a somewhat smaller extent, Hispanic) voters. Indeed exit polls have confirmed that Sanders performed poorly with black voters across all of the southern states that Clinton won.

However, it should be obvious that black Democrats living in Michigan or Ohio are not exactly the same as conservative, evangelical Democrats living in the deep south. Voters in Michigan — regardless of race — are more likely to share the values and concerns of nearby Minnesota than voters living in Alabama or Mississippi. However, the media has seemingly been content to lump “black voters” into a single bucket without accounting for this significant geographic difference.

I have yet to see any of the major news networks or political commentators point out what should be one of the most obvious facts about the Democratic race thus far: Hillary Clinton has yet to score a decisive win in any state north of the Mason-Dixon.

All of Clinton’s big wins (and the vast majority of Clinton’s delegates) have come from solidly Republican states in the deep south. In fact nearly all of Clinton’s delegate lead can be accounted for by just a few states — Texas, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. (These of course, are all states that extremely unlikely to vote for Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat in the general election.)

Her strongest states outside of the south have been Iowa — a virtual tie that she won by only two delegates, and Massachusetts — which was won by a single delegate. Meanwhile, Sanders has won at least four states that could be considered “swing states” in the general election — including Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire and now Michigan.

Note: Massachusetts and and Iowa are shown in purple to denote a virtual tie.

Sander’s strength in national head to head polls and record-setting fundraising are evidence of broad popular support.

There are two final pieces of evidence that weigh strongly against the media narrative of Hillary Clinton’s inevitable coronation as the Democratic nominee.

The first is Bernie Sanders’ persistent strength in national polls. As Brent Budowsky, writing for The Hill reports:

In a new CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) defeats Donald Trump (R) in a general election match-up by 55 percent to 43 percent, defeats Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) by 57 percent to 40 percent and defeats Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) by 53 percent to 45 percent. By contrast, Hillary Clinton (D) defeats Trump by 52 percent to 44 percent, less than Sanders but still impressive. However, while Sanders would defeat Rubio and Cruz by hefty margins, Rubio beats Clinton, 50 percent to 47 percent, while Cruz defeats her 49 percent to 48 percent.

While the polls vary with respect to how much Clinton wins or loses to each of the GOP candidates, one fact is true in every poll conducted to date: Sanders beats every Republican candidate head to head, and does so by a wider margin that Clinton.

The second, and perhaps most significant evidence of popular support for Sanders is the record amount of money that Bernie has raised from small individual donations. While Sanders’ fundraising lagged behind Hillary Clinton through January of this year, he out-raised Hillary for the first time in February, raising $20M to Clinton’s $15M. Sanders followed this up by more than doubling his February total in March, raking in an eye-popping $42M.

While Clinton has relied on funds from multiple SuperPACs and big fundraisers with lobbyists from Wall St. and the NRA, Bernie’s funding has come predominately from small, individual donations of less than $30. This is significant not just because it gives him plenty of money to compete with Hillary across the country, but demonstrates that there are literally millions of people across the country who have already invested in Sander’s campaign.

So if Bernie has millions of supporters, why haven’t they shown up to vote in large numbers?

The most likely answer is simply that most of Bernie’s supporters are concentrated in states that have not had the chance to vote yet. As discussed above, there is a strong regional divide between Sanders’ and Clinton’s support base. So far, Clinton has benefited greatly from a primary calendar that has been heavily front-loaded with conservative southern states where she does best. (Insert conspiracy theory number #2).

This means that as the map shifts away from the south, there are a lot of Bernie supporters out there in the states that are still on the board — and they anxiously waiting for their chance to vote.