(Bloomberg News) His rivals crisscross Iowa in campaign buses wired for satellite television with their faces painted on the sides. They have spent millions on advertising. Rick Santorum has trudged along in a pickup truck driven by a lone supporter. He has a minimal presence on television.
And he may be positioned to deliver the biggest surprise of the Republican presidential race.
The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, now in third place in the most closely watched Iowa poll, has spent more time in the state than any opponent, traveling to all 99 counties over more than 100 days. He's trying to validate the campaign axiom of the Iowa caucuses: organize, organize, organize and get hot at the end.
"This is an election that will be very close," Santorum told a group gathered yesterday in a crowded coffee shop in Sioux City, Iowa. "Our support is rallying and rising here, but there's two more days and there's a lot of work to be done."
In a year when social conservatives have bounced among candidates, Santorum's timing in Iowa could be spot on if he can manage to consolidate their votes in the way former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee managed to do in 2008.
U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia have also tried to court social conservatives as they present themselves as an alternative to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. None has managed to do so.
Iowa Poll Results
A Des Moines Register Iowa Poll released Dec. 31 showed Santorum backed by 15 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers, after a surge in the final two days of sampling. Ahead of him were Romney, at 24 percent, and U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas at 22 percent.
Late last month, Santorum won the personal endorsement of Bob Vander Plaats, a former candidate for Iowa governor and the president of the Family Leader, a coalition of social conservatives in the state.
How much that endorsement has helped him is hard to know, especially since it appears social conservatives may play a smaller role in this year's Iowa caucuses than four years ago.
In 2008, exit polls showed 60 percent of those who attended the Republican caucuses described themselves as born-again or evangelicals. The Register's Iowa Poll shows that proportion could be closer to one-in-three on Jan. 3.