In 2016, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won Michigans Upper Peninsula handily. He won 14 of the 15 counties in the region and lost the 15th by just 30 votes. It was one of a smattering of white, conservative, rural regions around the country, many of them reliably Democratic until recently, where Sanders was able to top eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Sanders victories in these places also see West Virginia, Kansas, North Dakota and Little Dixie in southeastern Oklahoma gave him delegates in his one-on-one battle against Clinton and provided a powerful argument for the Democratic Party s left wing.

Over the past four years, progressives have argued that the 2016 primary results showed white working-class voters in rural areas were more ready for Sanders progressive revolution than they were interested in Clintons center-left incrementalism. Sanders supposed strength with voters in the Rust Belt and Appalachia, most of whom rejected Clinton and former President Barack Obama , was at the core of the Bernie would have won argument from 2016.

This years primaries have painted a much different picture. On Tuesday night, Biden cruised to victory in the Upper Peninsula. As of 11 p.m. Eastern, he was winning every county in the Upper Peninsula. In Mackinac County, where Sanders had won with 55% of the vote four years earlier, Biden was winning by an identical 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 percentage points in 2016.

Throughout Michigan, exit polls show Sanders losing rural voters to Biden by a 51% to 40% margin. Sanders won 57% of the rural vote in 2016. Among white voters without a college degree, Sanders won just 43% of the vote in 2020 after claiming 57% back in 2016.