Republican Mitt Romney's victory in Michigan on Tuesday kept his presidential campaign alive, put the brakes on rival John McCain and left their party still with no clear White House favourite.
After three big contests in the race to determine which Republican will face the Democrats' choice in the November election, there have been three winners: Mike Huckabee in Iowa, John McCain in New Hampshire and now, Romney in Michigan.
Romney had built his campaign on a strategy of winning Iowa and New Hampshire. After losing both, the former Massachusetts governor had to win his birth state of Michigan to retain credibility as a candidate. Anything less than victory could have doomed him to irrelevance, despite his ability to spend millions of his own dollars to stay in the race.
Now he can claim momentum heading into the South Carolina contest on Saturday and Florida on January 29. Most importantly, 22 states will vote on "Super Tuesday," February 5.
Both parties had expected to crown their nominees that night but some strategists now believe the race in either or both parties could continue beyond Super Tuesday.
"Tonight marks the beginning of a comeback -- a comeback for America," a relieved Romney said at a victory rally in Southfield, Michigan.
The Michigan campaign was dominated by economic concerns. The state where the auto industry once was king has a higher jobless rate than any other U.S. state, 7.4 percent in November, but Romney said he could bring some of those lost jobs back and ease government restrictions on the automakers.
McCain's message in Michigan was the sort of "straight talk" for which he is famous: Some of those lost jobs will not be coming back, and those workers must be retrained for new, high-tech jobs.
Romney turned that around on McCain, vowing to help the auto industry and said the Arizona senator was offering a pessimistic message to be expected from a Washington insider.
"Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism," Romney said on Tuesday night.
McCain told supporters in Charleston he had no regrets about his Michigan strategy.
"We fell a little short tonight. But we have no cause to be discouraged or to second guess what we might have done differently. We did what we always try to do: We went to Michigan and told people the truth," he said.
