As the Acela Corridor fixates on Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigration, the Republican front-runner's supporters in Iowa believe he is building a movement there that will blow away doubts about his strength in the first-voting state.

Here is the conventional wisdom: Yes, Trump has a lot of support in Iowa, but the people who tell pollsters they like Trump are not the type to leave their homes on a snowy night in February to attend a caucus and vote for him.

That could be true; we'll know more on Feb. 2. But Trump supporters believe he is bringing new voters into the caucus process. Lest critics dismiss that as purely wishful thinking, they point to examples in the past when candidates — Pat Robertson and Ron Paul are two — brought previously uninvolved people into the caucuses. If Trump can attract newcomers, on top of a substantial share of traditional caucus attendees, the theory goes, he can win.

There are signs that could be happening. On Oct. 21, Trump held a rally at the Memorial Auditorium in Burlington, Iowa; press reports said about 4,000 people attended. The majority of them, well over 2,000, were from Des Moines County, where Burlington is located, meaning they didn't drive from elsewhere in the state to see Trump.

In 2012, Rick Santorum won this small county on caucus night with 388 votes.

Trump's job is to turn those crowds — the people who are for him who have never caucused or voted before — into actual caucus attendees. He has hired a capable on-the-ground staff in Iowa to do that. We'll see.

Meanwhile, the story out of Iowa at the moment is that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is on a roll. There's no doubt Cruz is doing well in Iowa, and on Thursday won the important endorsement of evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, on top of the sought-after endorsement of Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King. A Monmouth poll last week showed Cruz zooming past Trump in Iowa, while a CNN poll at the same time showed Trump in the lead. Either way, Cruz is coming on strong.

The question is whether Cruz's more conventional route to Iowa victory, a solid ground game and appeals to evangelical voters, beats Trump's unconventional path. The next Des Moines Register poll, said to be coming soon, will heavily influence everyone's thinking, although Trump supporters say the true extent of his support is not being captured in the polls.

One thing that is not a factor, or at least not a negative factor, for Trump in Iowa is his proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration into the United States. The idea that caused the punditocracy's heads to explode doesn't appear to be having the same effect among Iowa Republicans.

"Anyone who thinks Trump's Muslim proposal is going to hurt him in the polls should think again," writes the respected Iowa Republican blogger Craig Robinson, a former state GOP political director. "The success of Trump's campaign is a result of tapping into the frustration that so many people have about their government and elected officials. This issue is no different."

Trump and his team had been thinking about the Muslim proposal for a while, at least since the Nov. 13 terrorist attack in Paris. They knew it would cause a firestorm, and it did. But reaction of Republicans in Iowa — and this is anecdotal until there is some polling to shed light on it — is that some, perhaps many, appreciate a candidate with the courage to come out and say what they have been thinking. It's the same reaction Trump has gotten with controversial proposals in the past.

"It will be interesting to see what the polls have to say," writes Robinson, "but the instant reaction I've been hearing from people outside of the media has been favorable to Trump."

The Trump phenomenon has made this Iowa caucus particularly difficult to read. In 2012, Santorum won the caucuses with about 30,000 votes. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won with about 40,000. George W. Bush won with about 35,000 in 2000. And Bob Dole won with about 25,000 in 1996.

Trump wants to break out of that range. It's unclear whether he really has the ability to do it. But one thing that is clear is that Iowa's results probably won't be determined by the various media brawls that have surrounded Trump.