Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist running as a Democrat for president, has been drawing positive media coverage over the last week for relatively strong poll numbers and big crowds. 

Salon reports

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In Wisconsin, Sanders took a surprising 41 percent in the Democratic Party straw poll at the state convention, losing to Clinton by just eight points.

And Sanders is surging in New Hampshire, a crucial early primary state. According to a recent Morning Consult New Hampshire poll, Sanders holds an impressive 32% to Clinton’s 44%, and at a recent event in Keene, New Hampshire, the more than 1,000 people who showed up to see the democratic socialist couldn’t all fit into the room.

Sanders told NPR that he was “stunned” by the large crowds he’s drawing across the country: 

If you were to ask me a couple of months ago whether we would have larger crowds than any other candidate out there, I would not have told you that that would be the case.

The crowds are leading to funds: the Sanders campaign expects to have $10 million cash on hand by the end of the month (still dwarfed by the Hillary Clinton war chest). 

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With Clinton already tacking left on a variety of issues, it’s not clear that Sanders can sustain this momentum as we draw closer to the primaries, but he’s tapping in to the energy of an increasingly vocal progressive base. In the end, Clinton is popular enough among Democratic primary voters that this will almost certainly simply amount to token opposition, but perhaps Sanders can at least make things interesting.