Mitt Romney ran strongest in urban Michigan, but he still carried rural areas -- and evangelicals

Call it "Return of the Native," with apologies to Thomas Hardy. It appears that former Massachusetts Mitt Romney's roots in Michigan sprouted votes from him all over the state, crossing rural-urban and religious lines, as he won the state's Republican presidential primary yesterday.

Romney's margin over Arizona Sen. John McCain was larger in the state's metropolitan areas than outside them, but he still carried rural Michigan -- and even the evangelical voters who were the main target of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee but may have been less skeptical than those elsewhere of Romney's Mormon religion because he was raised in the state and his father was its governor.

"McCain made up some ground outside Detroit but failed to put together a majority in any part of the state except the Upper Peninsula," reports the Daily Yonder, which produced the pie chart. "In this region, the state’s most rural, McCain won 14 of 15 counties and beat Romney by 9 percentage points. McCain also performed well in the rural counties of Western Michigan, but Romney made up the difference in metropolitan Grand Rapids, Holland, and Grand Haven."

Huckabee got 18 percent of the rural vote, compared to 16 percent statewide. For the Yonder story, by Tim Marema, Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery, click here.