Mitt Romney

So, after backing John McCain to build his momentum, I see today that Mitt Romney has won the Republican Primary in Michigan. It's a big win for Romney, though with only half the delegates from Michigan allowed to vote at the Convention, its maybe not such a big loss for any of the others.

But for Romney, this may have been make or break point. He had to win the state to have any kind of momentum, and to persuade potential backers to keep funding him after spending big bucks early on with little in the way of reward. Giuliani is now in the same boat, after ignoring the early states he has to start winning some primaries beginning with South Carolina on Friday. If he can take that, and Fred Thompson can take a reasonable showing out of the Nevada caucus, there will still be five candidates on the Republican side who have a realistic chance of winning the nomination - and that makes it a very interesting race.

At the moment, on the back of his Michigan win, Romney has 42 delegates, Mike Huckabee has 32 and John McCain has 13. With 1,191 delegates required to secure a nomination, we've a long long way to go. But that might change on Feb 5th...