WASHINGTON – John McCain’s Straight Talk Express is back in the fast lane and New Hampshire has crowned another Comeback Clinton.

In picking winners different from Iowa five days before, New Hampshire voters reshaped the presidential primaries and served notice that the nation could be headed into a dramatically unpredictable election season.

On a night of sparkling comebacks, the New Hampshire results suggested that voters want a longer look at this year’s crop of presidential hopefuls.

Republicans signaled in McCain’s revival that the GOP finds former Mitt Romney lacking and may be uncomfortable with Mike Huckabee’s unorthodox, anti-Wall Street sentiments.

Democrats, meanwhile, said “not so fast” as far as coronating Barack Obama the Democratic nominee, suggesting they haven’t given up on Hillary Clinton.

The Granite State also may have lived up to its reputation as the grim winnower of presidential politics. The vote crippled the campaigns of Romney, who was governor of next-door Massachusetts, and John Edwards, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina who came in third.

The next stop is Michigan on Tuesday, where a victory by McCain would leave the Arizona senator the Republican front-runner. A loss by Romney in the state where his father was governor could knock him out of the competition, Michigan pollster Ed Sarpolus predicted.

“Michigan loves John McCain and Republicans here were depressed when it looked like he didn’t have a chance,” Sarpolus said.

McCain could benefit, Sarpolus added, by independents joining his cause due in part to the absence of a full-scale Democratic vote. Michigan is being punished and stripped of delegates by the national Democratic Party and Clinton is the only major candidate on the ballot.

Clinton’s victory over Obama, with Edwards a distant third, belied the polls that pointed to an easy Obama victory. Those surveys sent the Clinton campaign into emergency planning to keep the New York senator viable by the time Missouri, Illinois and more than 20 other states vote on Feb. 5.

The strain on Clinton showed when she teared up Monday when responding to a routine question – emotions that might have had played a role in the votes of women who made up their mind in the campaign’s final hours breaking heavily in her favor.

Former President Bill Clinton’s assertion Tuesday that his wife is being unfairly treated by the news media’s “fairy tale” coverage of Obama was cast by analysts as desperation but in the end might be regarded as a clever tactic.

The underfinanced campaign of John Edwards was left gasping with his third-place New Hampshire showing. He held out hopes that South Carolina, where he was born, can offer relief Jan. 29.

Bill Carrick, who managed the two presidential campaigns of Dick Gephardt, pointed to a telling barometer for Edwards in coming days and for candidates of both parties: “I firmly believe that no one ever quits a presidential campaign, they just run out of money.”

The New Hampshire results set up other potentially make-it or break-it contests:

-South Carolina GOP (Jan. 19). With Republicans looking beyond Nevada (Jan. 19), South Carolina and its broad evangelical support will be friendly turf for Huckabee, a Baptist minister before he was a governor of Arkansas. McCain stumbled here in 2000 and Fred Thompson could see the state as his last best chance to revive his lagging effort.

-Nevada caucuses (Jan. 19). A predicted Obama victory is now uncertain and the GOP race is wide open even though Romney has invested the most.

-South Carolina Democrats (Jan 26). With roughly 50 percent of the Democratic electorate African-American, Obama was positioned to do especially well if Clinton faltered.

-Florida (Jan. 29). In the final contest before Feb. 5 voting, Rudy Giuliani’s risky big-state strategy will be put to a stern test. For Clinton, Florida, where she led until recently by double digits, is an opportunity for new momentum heading.

McCain, 71, has the challenge now of competing beyond Michigan in some states that do not allow independents to cast GOP ballots and campaigning with little money.

Moments after he delivered a victory speech, his campaign sent out an urgent e-mail requesting donations. “The toughest times are ahead of us,” the e-mail read.

Heading south after Michigan, McCain, whose relationship with conservatives has been uneasy at best, must compete in GOP electorates decidedly more conservative where issues such as immigration could prove perilous.

Meanwhile, Romney was reeling after making 250 personal appearances in New Hampshire by his own count and spending more than $7 million in advertising – more than all his GOP rivals combined. He vowed Tuesday night to continue fighting but the support to do so looked to be in question.

The front-loaded election calendar had not favored Clinton. She had just five days to recover from her third-place showing in Iowa and the states looming next, Nevada and South Carolina, do not favor her.

But she was buoyed by voters who cited the economy as their biggest concern and lifted from the doldrums by women, who voted for her over Obama by a margin of 47-34 percent. In Iowa, Obama outpolled Clinton among women by 5 percentage points.

After Obama’s Iowa victory and a riveting victory speech, he was cast in some quarters as the certain Democratic nominee, predictions that proved wildly premature. Pollsters, too, are left to explain now how they missed Clinton’s New Hampshire turnaround.

Obama said after his Iowa success that he saw no need to change a winning campaign. He now must recalibrate, as Clinton did successfully in New Hampshire.