A victorious John McCain is to jet out of New Hampshire to the next Republican battlegrounds of Michigan and South Carolina after his triumph in the Granite State marked one of the greatest political comebacks of recent times.

Mr McCain, whose campaign was largely written off after it fell apart in the summer, beat Mitt Romney according to projections by US networks, a devastating blow for the former Massachusetts governor after his defeat last week in Iowa.

Mr Romney, who invested millions of his own fortune in an attempt to win Iowa and New Hampshire, now knows that a similar defeat in the primary in Michigan next Tuesday, where his father was governor, could deliver a mortal blow to his candidacy.

“I will fight across this nation, onto Michigan and Florida,” Mr Romney declared to supporters.

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Mr McCain, who famously beat George W Bush in New Hampshire in the 2000 Republican primary race, had gambled all on victory here to resurrect his campaign. As he refocuses on Michigan - a state he won in 2000 - and South Carolina, it is as part of a Republican race that remains highly volatile and unsettled but armed with a new campaign slogan: “The Mac is Back”.

Mike Huckabee, the Iowa winner, appeared headed for a third place in New Hampshire, a good result for the former Arkansas governor whose brand of evangelist populism was never a winning formula in one of the most secular states in America.

All the leading Republican candidates meet for another TV debate in South Carolina on Thursday night, ahead of its primary on January 19, in a contest that could prove pivotal. No Republican has won the party’s nomination without victory in the Palmetto State.

Fred Thompson, the former senator and Law & Order star, is to began an 11-day bus tour in the South Carolina, hoping that his conservative message and Southern roots will bring him victory and rejuvenate his campaign. “This has got to be my firewall,” he said.

Mr McCain’s victory in New Hampshire was a stunning vindication of his decision to retreat to the state after his disastrous summer. Having started the race as the Republican frontrunner, it emerged in July that his campaign was near bankrupt. His support for immigration reform infuriated conservatives, donors fled and he plunged in the polls.

He has campaigned almost non-stop in New Hampshire since. Mr Huckabee’s unexpected surge and victory in Iowa was an unexpected boost for Mr McCain, badly wounding Mr Romney. Mr McCain now hopes to emerge as the alternative to Mr Huckabee in South Carolina.

He will stage three campaign events in Michigan during Wednesday before flying on to South Carolina for an evening rally in Charleston. It was South Carolina where Mr Bush halted the McCain surge eight years ago in a dirty fight in which the Senator was smeared with false claims that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

But Mr McCain also knows that his own sometimes acid tongue and hot temper did not help, likening Mr Bush’s campaign to the evil “Death Star” in Star Wars and branding evangelical leaders as “agents of intolerance”. This time around his campaign, written off a few short weeks ago, is determined that in the days before the South Carolina Republican primary he will keep a better grip on himself.

Rudy Giuliani, who for so long was the national frontrunner but whose campaign has faltered in recent weeks, has always set more store by the later-voting and delegate rich states such as Florida but is desperate to secure a least one top-three finish in the looming contests. Last night he was in a fight for fourth in New Hampshire with Ron Paul, the libertarian.

Mr McCain, meanwhile, is indulging himself in looking ahead to a general election run-off against Barack Obama. When told the the glamorous and youthful Democratic candidate looked good without a shirt, he responded: “I won’t even take my sweater off.”

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