Near dusk on a muggy Saturday night in Cedar Rapids, more than 80 Iowans stood patiently in a slow-moving line in the parking lot of a strip mall near downtown. The attraction: the chance to question or take selfies with Beto O’Rourke, dressed in an open-neck blue shirt and gray pants.

Those in line at the opening of O’Rourke’s local headquarters ranged from retired nurse Connie McCall (“Beto really relates. He looks right at you”) to trucking executive Lance Voutrobek (“I like his appeal to the centrist, more moderate group, instead of the far left”).

At the same time almost to the minute, The Des Moines Register was releasing its Iowa Poll of likely caucus-goers that showed O’Rourke—once a darling of the political handicappers—with dismal 2-percent support. Sunday morning that minuscule poll number led George Stephanopoulos’s ABC interview with O’Rourke.

In covering presidential politics, there are moments when you have to choose between the polls and what you see with your own eyes. After following O’Rourke for most of two days, I am going with my instincts: The solid, attentive crowds of more than a hundred that he attracted for Friday town meetings in smaller southern Iowa towns like Ottumwa and Knoxville don’t seem like a short-lived mirage to me. Nearly eight months before the opening-gun caucuses, his presidential campaign just doesn’t feel like a futile gesture by an also-ran who instead should be running for the Senate from Texas.

O’Rourke is willing to admit that he has stumbled out of the starting gate, telling me, “I think I could have gotten off on a better foot, for sure.”