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High spirits at Santorum IA HQ

Published by Laura Olson on .


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As Rick Santorum hit the road for northwestern Iowa campaign stops today following his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," volunteers were busy dialing voters from his suburban Des Moines state headquarters.

While this afternoon's crew was considerably smaller than the 50 volunteers that packed the small business-park office on Saturday, they still needed to make use of the additional phone lines that were added late last week as Santorum's poll numbers ballooned.

"He's one of the best candidates out there," touted one girl as she chatted up a random voter.
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Campaign aides declined to make the phone-bankers available for interviews in between their requests for support.

But they did say that online hits have skyrocketed on the campaign web page, and that fundraising numbers also have seen a bump.

Part of the control is now out of their hands, and resting on the abilities of their caucus captains and other supporters to get voters to their designated locations on Tuesday evening.

Still, they appeared to be riding high following Saturday evening's final Des Moines Register poll, showing his apparent surge continuing.

As the P-G's Jim O'Toole noted in this morning's overview of the chaotic final days here, that poll still placed Santorum in third, at 15 percent, but if the final two days of polling were broken out, his support climbed to 21 percent.

"Momentum's name is Rick Santorum," said J. Ann Selzer, the Register's pollster, in the highly anticipated DMR report.

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