Republican presidential candidates were already congregating in the Christian conservative stronghold of South Carolina today, even before voting had finished 760 miles north in Michigan’s primary election.

Mike Huckabee was holding two rallies before watching the Michigan result with supporters at Hudson’s Smokehouse in Lexington. John McCain was due to arrive in Charleston in the afternoon where he will campaign tomorrow. Fred Thompson has been in the state all week.

Their haste is down to South Carolina’s pivotal importance in Republican politics. Ever since 1980, the winner of the Republican primary has gone on to secure the party’ presidential nomination.

And, while recession-blighted Michigan was where the candidates discovered the economy, South Carolina is where Republicans find God. Dave Woodard, a political consultant based at Clemson University in the state, estimates that more than half the 600,000 people expected to vote in the contest will be Christian conservatives.

Religion has never been far from the campaign, with Mr Huckabee’s win in Iowa two weeks ago attributed largely to evangelical support. But if the so-called “values voters” counted for less in New Hampshire and Michigan - in South Carolina they matter more. As Mr Clemson put it: “I tell the clients I advise, ’You better have a picture of you and your preacher’.”

Mr Huckabee appears the most natural beneficiary, perhaps because he is a Southern Baptist preacher himself. At a church service in North Spartanburg on Sunday, he addressed a congregation of 5,000 and described how he accepted Jesus into his life when he was ten years old on a bible study camp.

But the former Arkansas governor complains about the “unfair focus” on his faith from a media which constantly asks him if non-Christians can go to heaven or whether evolution should be taught in schools. Mr Huckabee is also opposed by many leaders of the Religious Right who have never forgiven him for siding with liberals in a Southern Baptist church split during the 1970s.

Mr McCain has painful memories of being beaten by George Bush in South Carolina eight years ago, a nasty campaign in which the Arizona Senator denounced some Evangelical leaders as “agents of intolerance”. This time around he is stressing that although brought up as an Episcopalian - a church which Bill Clinton likes to describe as the “frozen chosen” - he now worships as a Baptist.

Mr Thompson is highlighting his endorsement from the national anti-abortion campaign. Mitt Romney has been backed by Bob Jones III, the president of the fundamentalist university in Greenville, while Rudy Giuliani is supported by the Rev Pat Robertson.

It remains possible that other issues will cut through the fog of confusion. Mr McCain was today running a new advertisement emphasising his military service. Mr Romney, Mr Thompson and Mr Huckabee will press him hard on the issue of illegal immigration.

Katon Dawson, the chairman of South Carolina Republicans, suggested voters were looking for a candidate who could win the White House in November. “Usually, it’s ’Do I know you and do I like you,’” he said. “The discussions that I’m having with people are much deeper than that.”

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