Romney Back in the Hunt After Michigan Triumph

Mitt Romney last night stole the title of comeback kid from John McCain, keeping his hopes alive for the Republican presidential nomination with a convincing win in Michigan and throwing the party into even deeper confusion.

With 94% of the vote counted, Romney had taken 39%, McCain a distant 30% and Mike Huckabee 16%.

The relief was palpable last night in the Empress Suites hotel in Southfield where Romney and his supporters gathered. They had all been aware that the stakes could not have been higher - defeat in Michigan, the state of his birth, could have been fatal for his presidential chances.

But it leaves the Republican party in a quandary. With Huckabee in Iowa, McCain in New Hampshire, and now Romney each with big wins to their name - and with Rudy Giuliani still waiting in the wings - the party appears close to a state of electoral paralysis.

The former governor of Massachusetts sounded a belligerently populist note in his victory oration, vowing to take the fight to Washington. "Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism," he said, adding that Washington was worried because "they know that America now understands that Washington is broken and we are going to do something about it."

Romney's Michigan campaign focused heavily on core Republican values - God, patriotism and tax cutting. He adopted the same mantra of change as heard from Barack Obama, but insisted his version of change was very different.

"Democrats draw their inspiration from Europe of old - big government, big taxes. I take my inspiration from Ronald Reagan and George Bush who take their inspiration from the American people."

In his concession speech, McCain insisted that though the result made his road to the nomination harder he was not deflated. "We've gotten pretty good at doing things the hard way, too, and I think we've shown them we don't mind a fight, and we're in it."

But no words from the senator for Arizona could disguise that his failure to take Michigan - a state he won against Mr Bush in the 2000 primary elections - was a serious body blow for him. Not only does it block any momentum he gained from his New Hampshire victory, but it also points to his inability to enthuse the core of the Republican party upon which the nomination will probably depend.

Exit polls of Republican voters carried out by CNN gave clues as to why Romney stole the prize. More than 40% of Republicans said that his local ties - his father George Romney was a popular governor of Michigan, and Mitt was brought up in the state - were an important factor behind their decision.

A similar proportion, 42% of Republican voters, said that they had chosen Romney because of his stance on the economy compared with only 29% for McCain. That is a more serious disparity for McCain as the economy is rapidly rising up the political agenda as fears of a recession grow.

Strikingly, Romney took 40% of the core Republican vote, against McCain's 22%. McCain did better among floating voters and independents - but they amounted to a much smaller body of voters.

The results suggest that McCain has an uphill struggle to bring the Republican party faithful into his tent, which could prove to be a major hurdle in states where only party members are allowed to vote.

The Democratic vote in Michigan was spoiled by the fact that all the main candidates besides Hillary Clinton boycotted the election in support of the national party's protest against the state for bringing the ballot forward into January for the first time in its history.

Clinton took about two-thirds of the votes, despite agreeing not to campaign in Michigan, but strikingly "uncommitted" - the vote used by those Democratic voters who did not support her but had no one else to vote for - amounted to more than 40% of the vote.

That underlined a considerable degree of anger among Democrats in Michigan that they had been stripped of their vote - anger which the national party will have to work hard to assuage if it is to have any hope of taking the state in the national presidential election in November.