DETROIT -- Sen. John McCain, riding the same wave of Democrats and independents that won for him in New Hampshire, put himself back in the thick of the Republican presidential race last night by defeating Gov. George W. Bush in the Michigan primary.
McCain also easily won the primary in his home state of Arizona, giving himself a two-state sweep, after his decisive loss to Bush on Saturday in the South Carolina primary.
"We took on the iron triangle of big money, lobbyists and legislation, and we won another battle," McCain told cheering supporters in Phoenix, repeating his familiar slogan. "So America won today, and our children won."
FOR THE RECORD - In Wednesday's editions of The Sun, an article about the Michigan Republican primary misstated the proportion of Democrats and independents among those who voted. About 35 percent of the voters identified themselves as independents and 17 percent as Democrats.
The Sun regrets the error.
McCain's double victory raises the stakes for the showdown between him and the Texas governor March 7, "Super Tuesday," when 13 states, including California, New York and Maryland, will hold Republican primaries or caucuses.
Only four of those states -- Georgia, Missouri, Ohio and Vermont -- will hold open primaries in which Democrats and independents can vote, as they could here and in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Speaking in Kansas City, Mo., last night, Bush congratulated McCain but contended that top Democratic officials in Michigan had mounted a concerted effort to turn out Democratic voters for McCain as a way to spoil Bush's run for the nomination.
"I am confident that when we have the Republican primary and the Democrat primary on the same day, it's going to make it awful hard for some of those Democrats who are trying to come into our primary to affect the election," the Texas governor said.
A third candidate, Alan L. Keyes, a conservative Maryland talk-show host, finished a distant third in both primaries.
Polls of voters as they left ballot places indicated that a combination of McCain's huge advantage among non-Republican voters, along with his personal appeal and voter support for policies espoused by the Arizona senator, carried the day for him.
Exit polls indicated, strikingly, that only about half of the turnout for the Republican primary was Republican (49 percent). About 33 percent of the voters identified themselves as Democratic and 18 percent as independent.
Forty-seven percent said they were conservative, compared with 31 percent who called themselves moderate and 17 percent who said they were liberal.
