LANSING – What does it take to surprise the political establishment and hatch two unexpected winners who win by huge margins in a primary? Message, split opposition, lots of help from lots of friends, a political mood that embraces change, and lots of money, even if it isn’t your own money.

And what do the freshly minted victories of Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero for the Democrats and Ann Arbor Venture Capitalist Rick Snyder for the Republicans indicate for the general election, now just a few hours into the general election campaign? Analysts said that Snyder has a definite advantage with Michigan voters, but that it is critical that Republicans come together to support him.

For Bernero to win, he will have to raise much more money and make a much bigger effort to get the voters to recognize who he is, they said.

There have been primary surprises for gubernatorial nominations before in Michigan history, such as Richard Headlee for Republicans in 1982 and Geoffrey Fieger for Democrats in 1998, but rarely have surprises for the top spot occurred in both major parties in a single year and even more rarely could both surprising victors claim their victory by such large margins.

“That’s what’s surprising,” said Bill Rustem of Public Sector Consultants, especially of Snyder’s win, “the size and the strength of the win.”

Neither man had a lead in opinion polls until recently (Bernero was cited as leading in a poll two weeks ago that employed a very small sample, but last week both he and Snyder were shown as leading their respective parties. Pollsters said all trends since those initial leads showed voters were trending to Snyder and Bernero.)

At the beginning of the year, no political observer would have expected them to win their respective nomination. Snyder, who was favored by a number of business executives as a candidate who could get GOP politics out of the mire of seemingly unbreachable splits on social issues, had no political experience. All of his opponents – Attorney General Mike Cox, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Oakland County Mike Bouchard and Sen. Tom George – had years of elective political experience and had pulled together major coalitions of top supporters.

Bernero had plenty of experience, acquired relatively quickly from county commissioner, to state representative, to state senator and then Lansing mayor, but at the beginning of the year Lt. Governor John Cherry was assumed to be the Democratic nominees. When he suddenly withdrew from the race, there were serious questions of how Bernero would put together a campaign to defeat the better-financed House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Twp.).

Both candidates were helped by several factors. Not the least of these was money. In Snyder’s case, that was obvious since he was a successful business executive and was able to self-finance much of his campaign, and did not stint on spending.

In Bernero’s case, having more money is a more subtle factor. He actually raised about half the amount of money that Dillon did, and made that point in his victory speech. But he was helped by literally millions of dollars of spending on his behalf. The bulk of that came from the Genesee County Democratic Committee, which spent up to $2 million in his behalf, most on television commercials. But groups like Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan also put forth a major effort on Mr. Bernero’s part to stop the anti-abortion Dillon.

When the Genesee commercials ran attacking Dillon, the big shift to Bernero began in earnest.

Chris De Witt of De Witt Communications said it was clear Bernero could not have won without that help. “Absolutely not,” he said. “He needed to be able to deliver that message to key Democratic voters.” Only with the help of groups like the Genesee County party could he do that.

With his money, Snyder took a risk on a massive ad buy during the Super Bowl in February and established a unique campaign theme as a “one tough nerd” who could get things done. The ads and the message were belittled by political insiders, but clearly the message resonated.

Tom Shields of Marketing Resource Group said Snyder was clearly able to build a successful coalition of moderate Republicans (and one winner definitely was former Governor William Milliken who endorsed Snyder and was cheered at Snyder’s victory celebration, likely the first time he had been cheered at a major Republican function since he won his last nomination in 1978), independents, moderate Democrats and individuals who were not going to vote for any incumbents.

“You could just tell there was a great group of people who were fed up with government” that supported Snyder, Shields said.

In Bernero’s case, he was helped by the outrage Dillon generated among traditional Democratic groups, such as labor and liberals. Dillon infuriated labor a year ago when he proposed that all public workers be covered by a single health insurance system.

And Dillon, a Roman Catholic who is against abortion rights, and who urged construction of a coal-fired power plant, helped ignite a number of liberal groups in favor of Bernero.

Ironically, Bernero’s supporters helped both he and Snyder.

During Tuesday, Snyder’s campaign officials said they detected a large crossover vote of Democrats coming over to vote for their candidate. Indications were these were Democrats who would have preferred Dillon, but backed Snyder instead.

Also helping Snyder, Shields and Rustem said, was that his opposition was so split. Even with his impressive win, Snyder is a minority victor in his party as some 63 percent of Republican voters supported his more conservative opponents. His plurality is the smallest for a Republican nominee since Headlee took 34 percent in the 1982 primary.

Had one of the top conservatives in the race not run, it might have meant Snyder would not have won, both Shields and Rustem said.

On social media sites, supporters of Cox blamed Bouchard for stealing too many of Cox’s potential votes in Southeast Michigan. But looking at results, even if 100 percent of Bouchard’s votes had gone to Cox, it would not have been enough to defeat Snyder.

The split support was also exacerbated by Right to Life of Michigan endorsing Cox. Snyder said he is against abortion (though a number of people charge he is really for abortion rights), but endorsed embryonic stem cell research.

The endorsement of Cox angered the other candidates who said the group should have taken a pass since they were all anti-abortion.

Hoekstra, in fact, told one television reporter on Tuesday that Right to Life will have to take much of the responsibility for Snyder winning because it chose to focus on one candidate instead of giving a joint endorsement.

Asked if the fact that RTL will almost assuredly not endorse Snyder in the November race will hurt his chances at victory, all the analysts tread carefully around the issue.

What is critical, they said, is for Republicans to unite behind Snyder, and Shields and Rustem were both confident that would happen. This is the best year for Republicans to win the governor’s race in a decade, Shields said, and party members do not want to blow that chance.

Indeed, at least one GOP conservative who used his Facebook page to call Snyder essentially a communist last week, openly congratulated him and urge support for him late Tuesday night.

Still, the reaction of Republicans will be closely watched. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) had been blasting Snyder in Facebook postings leading up to the primary.

One key signal that this could be a Republican year is the difference in turnout between the two parties. Clearly, GOP turnout was helped by having more candidates, but better than 1 million people voted in the Republican race compared to about 500,000 in the Democratic race.

That shows the depth of interest vo