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Senator John McCain was back on the campaign trail in the northern state of Michigan yesterday, vowing to avenge his defeat by George W Bush in South Carolina and insisting the real battle for the Republican party’s presidential nomination had only just begun. But members of his staff conceded that, with the Bush campaign re-energised, a win for their man would be a struggle.
And, for all his bravado, there was no disguising Mr McCain’s disappointment or his unhappiness with the South Carolina campaign. “I’m gonna keep fighting clean, I’m gonna keep fighting fair, and I’m gonna keep fighting the battle of ideas,” he told rallies inMichigan yesterday. “I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land. I want the presidency in the best way, not the worst way.”Looking pale and tired but still smiling, he had arrived in Dearborn, near Detroit, in the early hours to be greeted by a couple of hundred poster-waving supporters in the lobby of the lavishly futuristic Hyatt Regency hotel – the house hotel of the Ford Motor Company next door.

He acknowledged the applause and slaps on the back and signed autographs but declined to comment, recharging his oratorical batteries for the rallies later in the day.However, his Michigan backers, who include some of the most respected former officials in the state – but not the Governor, John Engler, who has put all the weight of his office behind his fellow state governor Mr Bush – are determined to prove that “Michigan is different” and are convinced their candidate can win tomorrow’s primary.Michigan voters, they argue, have a lot more in common with voters in the north-eastern state of New Hampshire than they have with South Carolinians and will respond to Mr McCain in the same way.”He’ll do much better up here; it’ll even out now,” said a local party stalwart who had stayed up until 1am to welcome him. “South Carolina is split along very particular lines, lines that will not work in this state. He’s a maverick but maverick is what we all are.”That view was reinforced by John Schwartz, a Michigan state senator and chairman of Mr McCain’s campaign in the state: “While Governor Bush’s negative attack strategy may have worked in South Carolina – Michigan’s different Voters here … expect a thoughtful issue-based discussion, not a Dixie mud brawl.”But Mr Schwartz said this had not prevented the Bush campaign trying its negative tactics in the state. “As Governor Bush has fallen behind in Michigan, his campaign has dropped lower and lower. Just like South Carolina, we have been hit with a barrage of negative attack ads, mail, phone calls, and truly hateful and distorted e-mail and flyers.”Polls in Michigan show Mr McCain with a two-point lead, less than the built-in margin of error.

After languishing 20 points behind Mr Bush at the start of the year, Mr McCain had caught up and overtaken him after his victory in New Hampshire, taking a lead of nine points.That lead, though, now appears to have dissipated, and could be reversed after Mr Bush’s South Carolina win.The McCain campaign in Michigan is relying on the famously contrarian streak of Michigan voters and the relatively large number (30 per cent) of “independents” in the state, many of whom voted in the Republican presidential primary four years ago. As in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the Michigan primary is open to non-Republicans. In many districts voters are also being asked to take part in referendums on local issues, which could also increase non-Republican participation.It was independents and Democrats who brought Mr McCain his victory in New Hampshire and it was their failure to turn out in South Carolina that left the field to the strongly pro-Bush conservatives.Michigan is much bigger and more diverse than South Carolina or New Hampshire, which complicates the campaign for both main candidates. The state has more than twice the population of South Carolina, and its Republican party is one of biggest and most influential state parties in the country. It currently controls both chambers of the state legislature and the Republican governor is in his third term. It is seen as conservative and reformist at once – something that offers hope to both Mr McCain and Mr Bush.But there are also big demographic and social differences, with the industrial south-east, centred on Detroit, ethnically mixed and heavily Democratic, and the largely agricultural north and west predominantly white and strongly conservative.