Romney has already significantly scaled back his campaign in South Carolina, the next largely evangelical state and the first Southern state contested in the 2008 presidential race.

Although Romney is scheduled to head to South Carolina on Wednesday, he'll be in Nevada by late Thursday afternoon. Nevada also holds its Republican caucus on Saturday. Meanwhile, the other Republican McCain and Huckabee left Michigan earlier on Tuesday for campaign stops in South Carolina, where polls give Huckabee a lead over McCain and a trailing Romney.

It's not likely that Romney's new focus on his real-world business experience, which included turning around the scandal- plagued 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, would matter as much to voters in South Carolina as it did to those in Michigan.

Over and over again, Romney reminded Michiganders that he wouldn't give up on the auto industry and indeed, would bring back jobs and good economic times using the same skills that made him enormously wealthy. Romney earned a personal fortune estimated at $350 million by rescuing troubled businesses and launching national companies like the Staples office supply chain.

"The campaign has finally turned in a direction favorable to Gov. Romney," said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University in Boston. "Voters are beginning to associate him with his business background."

That's working much better for Romney than his early attempts to court the most conservative wing of the GOP, he said, especially since some of his conservative positions, such as his opposition to abortion, are relatively recent.

"He made a strategic error early on when he committed to being a serious candidate from the social right," Berry said. "He became associated with pandering rather than his strength, which is finding broken businesses and fixing them."

Berry said it seems clear Romney is conceding South Carolina. But Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said too much shouldn't be read into the decision to cut short Romney's time in South Carolina. Whether Romney will return to South Carolina or go on to Florida after spending two days in Nevada has yet to be determined, he said.

Romney accepted a phone call from McCain conceding the election shortly after the polls closed in Michigan at 9 p.m., his traveling press secretary, Eric Fehrnstrom, said. "It was a short conversation. John McCain said it was warm in South Carolina and the governor said he was looking forward to joining him."

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Associated Press contributed to this report.