(CNN) For five months now, Elizabeth Warren has bounced around the country pitching ambitious ideas -- typically anchored by well-timed policy rollouts -- to achieve the "big, structural change" at the core of her pitch to Democratic primary voters.

Now, with the first round of debates in sight, the energetic campaigner is beginning to see a different kind of movement -- in the polls. The latest round of surveys have shown Warren creeping up behind her ideological ally and friend Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator whose campaign is increasingly adapting similar smallball tactics as a way of more directly addressing voters' questions and concerns. Former Vice President Joe Biden remains the frontrunner by a comfortable margin, but in the race to represent the party's more liberal wing, Warren is quietly on the rise.

Her slow-burn campaign began on the last day of last year with modest fanfare, at least by comparison to the kind of attention initially dedicated to rivals like Beto O'Rourke, who dominated the will-he-won't-he headlines with a stream of journal entries and, eventually, a glossy magazine debut in March. But the opening slog of the primary, which still has about 8 months to run before the Iowa caucuses, gave Warren a chance to sharpen her trade -- and help her emerge in a way few predicted: as a cultural figure bolstered by a kind of meme-friendly fandom all candidates long for, but only a handful achieve.

The Massachusetts senator's schedule is meticulously drawn, but her interactions with those who come to see her is, apart from a quick pitch that shows up in almost every appearance, mostly unscripted. At town halls from Iowa and New Hampshire to less traveled campaign trails in Tennessee and Alabama, Warren has been grinding away, taking questions and, famously, selfies -- literally tens of thousands of them.

That appeal, typically confined to modest-sized "organizing events," has begun to spill over into social media, pop culture and the national press. During her Thursday morning appearance on "The View," an audience member held up a small flag reading, "Warren has a plan for that." She appeared on Time magazine's cover with those words -- "I have a plan for that" -- in headline print alongside her face, which looked on heroically to some distant horizon. For those paying attention -- and especially the voters, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll question, paying "a lot" of it -- the message seems to be landing. She was the only candidate other than Biden (42%) who registered double-digit support, at 15%.

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