Rand Paul campaigns at Morningside College, in Sioux City, Iowa. University students may vote in greater numbers than usual in the state’s Presidential caucus this year. PHOTOGRAPH BY JERRY MENNENGA / ZUMA PRESS / CORBIS

On a recent Friday evening, Jon Fossum, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa, stood at the entrance to the Other Place, a bar in Cedar Falls. “Are you guys here for Rand Paul?” he asked as people walked in. Fossum serves as the chapter president of Students for Rand, the Kentucky senator’s apparatus for mobilizing the youth vote for his Presidential campaign. The evening’s event, Pints for Liberty, was intended to attract U.N.I. students in order to collect their contact information. The bait: a band, beer, and an appearance by the candidate himself.

A guy wearing a baseball cap entered. “Are you here for Rand?” Fossum asked. “Uh, no,” he said, and gestured toward the back, where a TV was showing a basketball game. As the band set up, student volunteers sat at tables, theorizing about Paul’s musical tastes.

“I really want him to get up there and play ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ” one said.

“It’s not like he’s going to,” another said. “He told me he played the cornet in high school.”

The 2016 election will mark a change in the way candidates view college students. For the past two Presidential elections, the Iowa caucuses were held in early January, while students were home for winter break. But in this cycle the caucuses will be on February 1st, when school is back in session. While Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both have robust student organizations in Iowa, the Republicans have, by and large, written off the youth vote. In August, Ben Carson’s campaign held a Carson Family Festival in Cedar Rapids. It featured a Christian rock band, a root-beer station, grilled chicken, and young women dressed as Disney princesses—not the kinds of attractions that lure newly minted teen voters.

So far, Rand Paul is the only Republican candidate with a presence at U.N.I., part of his campaign’s aggressive focus on college students.

“We’re taking over the caucus on February 1st,” Fossum said. “No one’s going to see it coming.” Paul is polling in the low single digits, but Fossum insists that these numbers do not take into account his greatest source of support: students. “Pollsters don’t call cell phones,” he said. “It’s all landlines. What college student has a landline?” Fossum contends that if Paul can turn out ten thousand students on caucus night, the senator will win Iowa. This would give him momentum going into the New Hampshire primary, where his libertarian message plays well. If Paul can win those first two contests, Fossum believes he will be the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

But Paul hasn’t had much success yet with college students, most of whom prefer Bernie Sanders. “We are the same socially,” a sophomore named Joe Romenesko said, referring to Paul and Sanders backers. “It’s just economically where the difference is. It’s fun to try to convince Bernie supporters that capitalism is better than socialism.” Alex Staudt, the president of Students for Rand at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, demonstrated their persuasion technique: “You know how student organizations have free pizza at their meetings?” he asks Sanders supporters. “It’s not like Papa John’s just donates those. Someone’s paying for it. Same with when Bernie says he’s going to make college free.”

The band started playing, opening with an acoustic version of Kanye West’s “All of the Lights.” Suddenly, cameras flashed outside the window. The crowd began to chant, “President Paul! President Paul!” The band hastily launched into the Beatles’ “Come Together.”

Paul, wearing a black blazer and dark jeans, was ushered past the booths, and a staffer handed him a pint of amber beer. He took a sip and waved. Students yelled goofy remarks: “He has great hair.” “Is he a model or something?” Staudt introduced Paul to his mother, Susan Abernathy. She asked a question, Paul grinned and pointed to his ear, and then to the loudspeakers, before being swiftly herded off.

The senator worked his way along the bar, shaking hands. He made his way back up front, where the band was playing Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive,” and, without giving the crowd so much as a “Thanks for coming,” was out the door, less than twenty minutes after arriving.

The Students for Rand looked downcast. “I thought he was going to be here for longer than that,” Romenesko said. “Maybe he just had a long day or something.”

“I was really hoping he’d give some words of wisdom,” Staudt, who had driven an hour and a half for the event, said.

Fossum remained upbeat. He is tasked with turning out two thousand college students on caucus night; so far, he has secured a few hundred. When a couple of slurring students walked up to Fossum, who was sitting in the corner at the data-entry station, and one said that he planned to run for President as a libertarian in 2028, Fossum joined them at their booth and registered them both as student leaders for the campaign.