If there’s a consensus among the predictions, it’s that Romney will win, but just barely.

Three of the four pundits quoted by Chris Cillizza see McCain and Romney finishing within one percent of each other.

Erick Erickson thinks Romney will win, and that the victory will count as a “relaunch” of his campaign. I think many will be asking, “hey, who is this wonky, economics-focused, less-negative, less attacking, less touting-himself-as-a-consistent-social-conservative-and-hoping- nobody-sees-YouTube-of-his-1994-and-2002-campaign-statements guy, and where was he in Iowa and New Hampshire?”

If Romney does win, this observation from Byron York, on the ground there in Michigan, will strike me as pivotal:

Romney’s proposals might not be music to the ears of free-market conservatives who believe Detroit made its own problems and needs to fix itself. But it’s what a lot of people in Michigan want to hear. Later in the evening, Romney goes to his hometown suburb of Bloomfield, to the Shenandoah Country Club, to address the Oakland County Republican Party. The people there are Romney supporters, and they especially admire his business background. They feel Romney was right to go after John McCain over McCain’s comment that some lost auto industry jobs won’t come back. “He’s hitting it hard because McCain said those jobs are lost,” Greg Every, a businessman who owns three sports equipment stores in the Detroit area, tells me. “As a Republican, I was always taught to be a fighter, not a quitter. And I think Romney is hitting home hard with, ‘I’m going to fight for every one of these jobs.’ And I think you can. My dad worked for Ford for 30 years, and every year they’re cutting something out of his pension. And that’s because it’s not a level playing field, the Japanese pay less for their cars to come here, and Ford pays more. We have all this retired work force, and they don’t. The tables are not level, and it’s not fair for Michigan.”

If we’ve seen anything from the Hillary comeback in New Hampshire and the Obama surprise victory in Iowa, it’s that emotional connections matter in presidential primaries in 2008, a lot. Maybe nostalgia is the right move on Romney’s part. Voters haven’t been shooting down the most pie-in-the-sky talk of energy independence, all of the troops out of Iraq by next week, free government-run health care, etc., with withering skepticism. So far, judging by the swaths turning out for Hillary and Obama, it’s a credulous electorate willing to vote on the basis of amorphous ”hope,” or the one who claims to care the most and sheds the tears to show it.

Maybe a man who pledges to bring back the glory days of Detroit automakers will win over votes on the optimistic vision alone.