Mitt Romney's campaign is back on track and the Republican party is left without a front-runner after the Michigan primary Tuesday night. The Massachusetts governor and son of Michigan defeated John McCain by a sizable 39-30 margin.
As mentioned after New Hampshire last week, little is to be learned here. Romney's campaign obviously was in need of a win in a state that matters, and his win means that three different candidates have taken the first three important states (he won Wyoming earlier, but no one noticed). So Romney remains a player and there's still a bunch of GOP candidates bunched up with varying but generally close levels of support. Heck, to Romney's credit, he gained a win in a state Republicans might need in November.
McCain and Huckabee still lead the national polls. Romney is with them on some days, trailing a bit on some others.
So now they'll run toward South Carolina, where Mike Huckabee and McCain lead but Romney is relatively close in the polls, and Florida, where Rudy Giuliani has given up a 20-point polling advantage and left the race to four candidates within four and a half points of each other with two weeks to go.
The only candidate on the rise in polling in both states is McCain. If he takes both, he'll have a major advantage come Super Tuesday. No one is catching fire with Republican voters, he's as close as it gets right now.
---
Not sure if the exit polls will get blasted after Michigan like the pre-voting polls did in New Hampshire, but some things that came out tonight are downright weird.
First, of those Republican voters who don't like the war in Iraq, they gave a majority of their votes to McCain, a consistent supporter of the Operation Iraqi Freedom.
How about this? Those who believe abortion should be legal gave a 4-point margin to McCain, a consistent opponent of abortion. Romney, who has waffled on the issue, had a 14 percent margin over McCain among those who oppose abortion. Huh?
Romney won all economic groups except the destitute, and even those who felt family finances that were turning sour. He won among the religious of any sort. McCain won overwhelmingly among the non-religious.
Perhaps most important for Romney, he won among self-described Republicans by an even larger spread of 41-27 percent than he did overall. The GOP tally included 7 percent Democrats and 25 percent independents in this crossover state. Both went for McCain, although the spread among the very important independent vote was just six points.
