Both Obama and Edwards withdrew from the Michigan ballot because of questions about whether the state's delegates would be seated at the Democratic convention. State party officials, seeking to leapfrog other states on the calendar, scheduled Michigan's primary earlier than permitted by the Democratic National Committee wanted, resulting in the DNC punitively stripping Michigan of all of its delegates.

A similar delegate scenario also played out with the GOP in Michigan, but the Republican National Committee elected to only halve Michigan's delegate total from 60 to 30.

Michigan is where Romney was born and raised, and where his father, George, ran American Motors and served three terms as governor in the 1960s before launching his own, unsuccessful, bid for the White House in 1968. Although Romney has not lived in the state since leaving for college, he made sure his Michigan audiences knew he considered the state home.

But even more important than his ties to the state may have been his promise to revive Michigan's struggling auto industry. Lost jobs in the auto plants, including 200 announced last weekend, have resulted in Michigan having the nation's highest unemployment rate. That promise seemed to resonate with voters.

"He's hitting his stride," said Romney senior adviser Ron Kaufman. "The bottom line is people are starting to pay attention to his message."

Romney's new focus on economic issues in Michigan was a calculated move by the campaign to showcase his strengths while helping avoid turning attention to his Mormon faith, increasingly acknowledged as a weakness with conservative voters.

In recent days, Romney insiders have criticized his chief competition for evangelical Christian voters, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, for how he handled religion in Iowa. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, beat Romney in Iowa after raising questions about Romney's membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many evangelicals do not believe Mormons are fellow Christians.

At Romney's final campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday, one of his supporters, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told reporters Huckabee attacked Romney's religion in Iowa and it cost him (Romney) the election even though he had run a good campaign.

Hoekstra slammed Huckabee for "the whole attacks, and trying to create divisions based on religion lines and class warfare." We never played to the religious issue. I think Huckabee is continuing to play the religious card but I don't think it's going to have the same kind of impact here in Michigan that it had in Iowa." In Iowa, evangelicals made up an estimated 60 percent of the GOP caucus vote.

He said the campaign has learned from the experience. "I think we're now responding to it more effectively," Hoekstra said, citing the effectiveness of Romney's newfound economic message. "I don't think we ever kind of expected the religious card to be played as strong, as forcefully and as negatively as what it was."