Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney claimed victory at the Michigan primaries tonight, by a margin of 9% with 89% of the precincts reporting as of this writing. He was followed by John McCain with 30%, who had hopes of winning Michigan after his victory in New Hampshire, Iowa victor Mike Huckabee with 16%, and Ron Paul with 6%. Exit polls showed that the economy was overwhelmingly the most important issue to Michiganites, which is a huge indicator as to why Romney one. While campaigning in Michigan, John McCain’s “Straight-Talk Express” has been telling voters that the manufacturing jobs that left Michigan aren’t coming back, whereas Romney campaigned on restoring the auto industry there by giving more tax incentives to U.S. auto makers. While McCain is right, the jobs aren’t coming back, it clearly wasn’t what Michigan voters wanted to hear. Mike Huckabee barely registered with barely half the votes of the 2nd place finisher and he didn’t even win the vote among Evangelicals, who the majority decided instead to vote for Romney. While Huckabee didn’t put forth much effort in the state, it must still be disheartening to finish a distant third for the second contest in a row. Romney however, is riding high after a solid second-place finish in New Hampshire and tonight’s victory. After being declared the winner, Romney said, unfortunately without a Howard Dean-esque yelp:

“Now on to South Carolina, Nevada, Florida, This campaign is going to go to all 50 states.”

Apparently Romney is jumping on the “hope” and “change” bandwagon as he added:

“It’s a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism. The people of Michigan said they believe in someone who is going to fight for them.”

and also:

“This is the day that’s going to change, I believe, the politics of our nation as we get ready to select our nominee.”

Now, as always in this year’s presidential race, everything is confusing once again as one more contest has been decided, yet nothing has been.

Romney: Michigan a “Victory of Optimism” – [AP]