NASHUA - Three questions after a stunning evening.

Q: Did Hillary Clinton cry her way to victory last night?

A: That certainly seems to be where the conventional wisdom is headed, but as Jay pointed out last night, the data doesn't appear to support the idea that there was any "late break" to Clinton based on her "reverse Muskie moment."

Among the seventeen percent of voters who said they made their choice on the primary day, Clinton edged Obama by a slight margin, 39% to 36%. Obama edged Clinton among the 21% of those who decided in the last three days (37-34), and beat her soundly among the 10% who decided sometime last week (43-28) and the 17% who made their decision in the last month (44-34). But among the 34% who said they had locked in their choice prior to the final month, Clinton dominated Obama by a margin of 48 to 31.

This doesn't rule out the possibility that many people, especially older women, who considered themselves "decided" on Hillary Clinton for some time weren't spurred to the polls by events in the closing days of the race who might have otherwise stayed home. So maybe the CW is at least partially right.

Q: Is Romney done?

A: Not totally, but close. Pundits are calling last night's loss "devastating" and saying his campaign is "on life support" as he heads off to must-win Michigan. If Romney loses to McCain in his home state, he will almost certainly be left for dead as the race moves on to South Carolina, a place where recent polls show him running a distant third behind Huckabee and McCain.

The task in Michigan is made all that more difficult by the fact that Independents can vote in either primary, and there is no contest on the Democratic side since most major candidates opted off the ballot at the DNC's urging last October. Though McCain has no organization in Michigan, he's a popular, well known figure who won the state in 2000 and now returns with high visibility coming off of his dramatic victory here last night.

Q: Can Obama survive?

A: Sure he can. But we're going to see just what kind of mettle Obama and his staff have now that they've been knocked off stride in a contest they clearly felt - as did everyone else in the known universe, including Clinton - that they were going to walk away with last night.

Democrats are off to compete in Nevada, but South Carolina now becomes Obama's primary firewall. Recent polls show he received a significant post-Iowa bounce in the Palmetto State, but there's no telling whether or how long those numbers will hold up in the wake of last night and over the next two weeks. And given what we saw last night with all the polls badly missing the mark on the Democratic side in the nation's first primary vote, will the next contested primary produce the same kind of volatility? Or was New Hampshire merely an aberration?

That's the remarkable thing about the race this year: the further it goes along, the more questions it generates.