Concord, N.H. – The New Hampshire primary was supposed to narrow the crowded Republican field. Instead, it remains as jumbled as ever when it arrives Wednesday squarely in the South.

As the polls long predicted, Donald Trump won a decisive victory Tuesday in New Hampshire, besting his nearest opponent by nearly 20 percentage points. And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Iowa victor, emerged from the unfriendly Granite State territory unscathed with a third place finish.

But it’s the ongoing muddle in the middle that complicates an already complicated race ahead of the Feb. 20 GOP primary in South Carolina.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio used his surprisingly strong third-place finish in Iowa to make the case that he's the Republican who can unite the party – until his poor performance in Saturday's debate in Manchester exposed weaknesses in his campaign.

His New Hampshire support utterly collapsed in the days after the debate, dramatically raising the stakes in the South.

"Our disappointment tonight is not on you, it is on me," Rubio said Tuesday. "I did not do well on Saturday night. That will never happen again.”

Two other mainstream candidates jockeying to be the alternative to Trump and Cruz had mixed performances.

Newly emboldened, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush vowed to fight on after his fourth place finish, and promised to be a thorn in Trump’s side.

"This campaign's not dead," he told about 250 people in Manchester even as his top surrogate in South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham, trumpeted that the "Bush name is golden in my state."

Consider New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's presidential bid, then, on life support. Christie said he would return home "to take a deep breath" after his sixth-place finish here, and his poll numbers may be too low to make the stage at Saturday's debate in South Carolina.

And then there is Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who surged to a second-place finish after weeks in the middle of the pack. He promised to stick with his optimistic message as he campaigns in the South – and even to take more time listening and “healing” with groups of voters.

Yet his more moderate stance and record of compromise with Democrats is a tough sell with some Republicans who see little difference between being conciliatory and being co-opted.

Perhaps Kasich described the race best when he offered his crowd of supporters at a Concord hotel a final piece of advice before he left the ballroom.

“You just wait, let me tell you,” said Kasich. “If you don’t have a seat belt go get one.”