As we barrel down the homestretch to the Iowa caucuses, left-wing poll-watchers everywhere should allow themselves a moment to enjoy the sound of professional pundits proven disastrously wrong.

“Hillary Clinton is the most dominant nonincumbent ever,” declared Slate’s John Dickerson, reporting from Iowa one year ago. “Democrats like Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders are making moves, but few local activists even pretend that they are serious challengers to Clinton.” Harry Enten, adopting the FiveThirtyEight house style of a precocious child reading statistics from the back of a baseball card, concluded last April that Clinton’s “path to the nomination looks easier than anything we’ve ever seen before.” Sanders, on the other hand, was “a self-described socialist” — a sufficient disqualification for Enten to spend less time contemplating his candidacy than the threat posed by Lincoln Chafee.

Now, in the week before voting begins, Sanders finds himself in the unlikely position of early-state frontrunner: polls show him neck-and-neck with Clinton in Iowa and far ahead of her in New Hampshire.