SOUTHFIELD, Mich. - His presidential hopes on the line, former governor Mitt Romney captured his first major victory in the Republican race yesterday, handily beating Senator John McCain of Arizona in Michigan's GOP primary and further scrambling the party's nomination contest.
With more than 95 percent of precincts reporting last night, Romney was leading McCain 39 percent to 30 percent, with former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas a distant third at 16 percent.
"Tonight marks the beginning of a comeback, a comeback for America," Romney told jubilant supporters in Southfield, outside Detroit. "Only a week ago, a win looked like it was impossible, but then you got out and told America what they needed to hear."
Romney's victory in Michigan, the third major battleground state for Republican candidates, infuses badly needed energy into his campaign, which had suffered two disappointing second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.
But it also further confuses the GOP nomination race heading into key votes in South Carolina on Saturday, Florida on Jan. 29, and nearly two dozen states that go to the polls on Feb. 5. Three different Republicans have now won the first three contests. Huckabee, a Baptist minister riding a wave of support from evangelicals, won the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, while McCain on Jan. 8 won his second Granite State primary in eight years.
McCain and his campaign sought last night to explain Romney's victory by pointing to the former governor's Michigan roots - he was born and raised here - and expressed confidence about South Carolina and beyond.
"For a minute there in New Hampshire I thought this campaign might be getting easier," McCain told supporters in Charleston, S.C., where he had flown yesterday even before the polls closed in Michigan. "But you know what? We got pretty good at doing things the hard way. I think we're showing them we don't mind a fight, and we're in it."
Romney had said he would press on even without taking first place in Michigan, but many analysts believed he had to win the state to remain a viable contender for the Republican nomination.
Exit polling data yesterday helped explain why Romney was able to beat McCain.
Independent voters, a crucial constituency for McCain when he won Michigan's primary in 2000 - when they made up 35 percent of the state's primary voters - constituted only about a quarter of voters yesterday, according to the exit poll, conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the Associated Press and television networks. Republicans, meanwhile, made up more than two-thirds of voters, and they chose Romney over McCain 40 percent to 26 percent.
A majority of voters, 56 percent, said they considered themselves "conservative," and Romney beat McCain among that group 40 percent to 22 percent. Romney also fared better than his rivals among evangelical Christians, who made up 40 percent of the GOP electorate.
On a day that brought snow to much of Michigan, early reports suggested a low turnout; election officials predicted 20 percent of registered voters would participate. That's mostly because the Michigan primary, while significant to Republicans, was largely irrelevant to the Democratic race. By contrast, the turnouts in Iowa and New Hampshire set records.
After Michigan last year scheduled its primary date earlier than was sanctioned by the national parties, the Democratic National Committee punished the state by stripping it of all its Democratic delegates to this summer's national convention, where its nominee will be ratified.
Consequently, the Democratic candidates have not campaigned in Michigan. Senator Hillary Clinton, unlike her rivals, elected to keep her name on the ballot anyway, and received 56 percent of the vote; 39 percent of Democratic voters selected "Uncommitted," widely interpreted to be a vote against Clinton.
The Republican National Committee took away only half of Michigan's GOP delegates, leaving Romney, McCain, and Huckabee to compete aggressively here in the week since the New Hampshire primary.
The brief Michigan primary campaign focused largely on the economy, the leading issue in a state with the highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate and thousands of home foreclosures. Romney attempted to paint McCain as defeatist for having said that lost manufacturing jobs "won't come back." McCain responded by saying Michigan needed "straight talk," not false optimism.
Romney, in his campaign appearances across the state, stressed his experience in the private sector, saying it would help him restore Michigan's beleaguered auto industry.
"I will not rest until Michigan is back," Romney told about 100 cheering supporters yesterday at a rally at a Grand Rapids furniture warehouse.
Indeed, Romney's nostalgia for the glory days of the automotive industry was central to his attempts to run a native-son campaign in the state where he launched his campaign nearly a year ago. He also sought to capitalize on the legacy of his late father, George Romney, a popular three-term governor in the 1960s whom Romney turned into something of an invisible surrogate.
Yesterday Romney even imagined how his father would be cajoling voters if he were alive today.
"He'd be arguing with people that had a sticker on for somebody else, going: 'You can't vote for that guy! You've got to vote for my son,' " said Romney, who ran a TV spot that featured the two in boyhood snapshots and asserted, "Michigan is personal to me."
With Democrats and independents allowed to vote in the Republican primary, McCain said he was once again counting on their support, saying that it would prove him to be the "electable candidate" in the Republican field.
"We're depending on independents, Democrats, Republicans, libertarians, vegetarians, Trotskyites," McCain said outside a polling place in Traverse City. "Having independent and Democratic voters shows the potential for the general election in November."
The Republican primary race now quickly shifts to South Carolina ahead of Saturday's vote. Before the Michigan polls had closed, Huckabee, like McCain, had already flown to the Palmetto State, and McCain and Romney had launched new TV ads there.
In McCain's new ad, targeted at military retirees and active-duty service members, he reminds voters of his service as a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War and in the US Senate. "Now I ask to serve as your president," he says.
Romney, who suspended his TV ads in South Carolina to focus resources in Michigan, returned to the air with a spot trumpeting his record as a successful corporate turnaround artist. Addressing China's growing economic power, Romney promises to level the playing field on trade, lower taxes, and invest in research, saying, "America must remain the world's economic superpower." Romney is scheduled to return to South Carolina today.
Huckabee, campaigning in Rock Hill, S.C., wasted little time in appealing to Republican voters by taking a hard line on illegal immigration. He called for halting immigration from countries that sponsor terrorists or harbor them.
"Let's say, until you get your act in order, and we get our act in order, we're not going to just let you keep coming and threaten the future and safety of America," Huckabee told supporters after arriving from Michigan, according to the AP.
Last night, Huckabee congratulated Romney, noting that he had a "great base" in his native state, but Huckabee vowed South Carolina would be his.
"It looks like I won Iowa, John McCain won New Hampshire, Mitt Romney won Michigan," Huckabee said in Lexington, S.C. "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to win South Carolina."
Also competing in South Carolina is former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who is hoping the state's voters will revive his flagging campaign. Polls last summer suggested that Thompson was competing for the lead, but he has dropped to fourth in the most recent surveys.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who decided to effectively skip the early contests, including South Carolina, has pinned his hopes on Florida and states such as New York, California, and New Jersey that vote on Feb. 5.
Sasha Issenberg of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.
(Correction: Because of a graphic artist's error, a graphic showing results of the Michigan primary on Page One yesterday transposed the percentages for Republican candidates Fred Thompson and Ron Paul.)
