MANCHESTER, N.H. — The pundits think he’s nearing the end. His donors are itching to jump ship. But Jeb Bush thinks he’s about to take the first step toward an unlikely comeback.

“You don’t have to listen to the pundits,” Bush told voters here. “In fact, you’ll figure it out for the pundits.”


The Bush campaign enters its last day before New Hampshire votes with the single aim of delivering a top-five performance that justifies pushing south, where they say they believe a better organization and a family rescue plan will drag his candidacy up from the cellar.

And with every 2016 front-runner wounded – Donald Trump failing to beef up a sub-par ground game after an embarrassing Iowa loss, Ted Cruz looking manipulative after duping Ben Carson’s supporters, and Marco Rubio's over-rehearsed debate performance feeding the robotic stereotype he spent a campaign trying to shed – Bush’s team has newfound optimism, especially over the weekend as he saw the biggest crowds of his campaign here.

“Jeb’s network in South Carolina is just as strong as the other three candidates who are likely to survive,” said one long-time Bush donor, speaking privately. “He just has to get there.”

But even with a strong organization and family network of Bush loyalists streaming into New Hampshire, it’s a heavy lift. Just the mention of his name elicits laughs from Trump’s crowds. His deadpan aside to a town hall last week, asking them to “please clap,” exploded into an Internet meme seemingly encapsulating a fallen frontrunner’s sad predicament. In interviews over the last week, reporters have been asking if he’ll drop out should he do poorly here.

Bush’s team would love to stun with second in New Hampshire and revive a campaign that’s been written off for months. Indeed, that scale of victory might be the only thing that allays the anxieties of increasingly nervous donors, many of whom have already signaled that they’ll switch their support to Rubio if Bush doesn’t finish ahead of him and other establishments contenders, John Kasich and Chris Christie, on Tuesday.

“People feel like they’ve given him a lot of time,” said one major Bush bundler based in Washington, DC, who asked to speak privately. “His issue set should be appealing in New Hampshire, so hard to make the case [to go forward] if he finishes behind those other establishment guys.”

Realistically, Bush doesn’t appear to be positioned for a second place finish, based on public and private polling. But his campaign is no longer convinced that he needs one.

According to people inside the campaign and sources close to it, the Bush team thinks he only needs do well enough to rationalize a trip to South Carolina, where plans for an all-out push—busing in canvassers from Florida and bringing in former President George W. Bush, already featured in a TV spot running there, to campaign—are already underway.

The strength of Bush’s operation in New Hampshire belies the broader narrative of a sagging campaign. Since announcing his campaign in June, Bush has made 23 separate trips to New Hampshire. His 40 paid staffers and dozens of volunteers – more than 200 were canvassing over the weekend – have been knocking on doors and calling voters for months, even in far-flung parts of the state.

Even with what the state GOP chair has called the best ground operation of any campaign, Bush is arguably working harder than anyone else just to hold on to the roughly 10 percent of the primary electorate that’s with him at the moment.

“There won’t be a single candidate here who will outwork Jeb,” said Jamie Burnett, a veteran of Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign here who is supporting Bush.

The voter contact efforts include calling attendees after Bush’s town halls to gather feedback and gauge support, then having the same staffer follow up repeatedly by phone.

“This is an ongoing, personal conversation we’ve been having with voters,” said Rich Killion, the operative overseeing Bush’s campaign in the state. “The people of New Hampshire are deeply sophisticated; they cherish their vote and really process information and it takes them a long time.”

Bush’s team is clinging to hope that the trend of late-deciders here holds true, and that New Hampshire polls, which have shown Bush stuck around the 10 percent mark for weeks, don’t reflect a race that remains more fluid than many believe. “I just don’t see who commits to Jeb who isn’t committed to him already,” said Drew Cline, the former editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union-Leader who is backing Marco Rubio. “There may be a few voters out there who want a governor and have yet to decide between Bush, Christie and Kasich, but that’s not worth more than another point or two.”

Right to Rise, the super PAC Bush helped raise $103 million in the first six months of last year before becoming an official candidate, was supposed to be his ace in the hole. But the group’s incessant canvassing of New Hampshire—the TV ads running non-stop, the glossy leaflets coming in the mail seemingly every day—has done little to move Bush’s numbers up. In fact, they’ve turned off some voters.

“Three out of four fliers every day are Right to Rise and they're all negative," a retired teacher named Patty Giguere told Bush during a town hall last week in Laconia. "You say you have no control over it, but can't you denounce it?"

Bush refused to denounce the negative attacks coming from his super PAC, answering Giguere with his standard line that running for president “is not bean bag” and mocking Marco Rubio for complaining that the criticism is too harsh. Giguere, who found herself swarmed by reporters after the town hall, wasn’t sold. Her problem isn’t the negativity, she said, just that the attacks are coming from a super PAC.

“[Trump] said if Bush had paid everybody in Iowa $1,000 he might have won,” Giguere said. “And it’s true. I think he’s a nice man. He might even have been president if his brother hadn’t run. But he’s letting them be the bad cop and he doesn’t denounce it.”

If the polls are correct, then Bush has some problems — and the biggest one is Rubio, whose post-Iowa momentum is carrying him past his establishment rivals and within striking distance of Trump. After exceeding expectations in Iowa, Rubio has been polling in the high teens here; and his campaign is accommodating crowds twice as large as anticipated, often upwards of 700 at evening rallies, and having to move events over the weekend to larger venues. Although his shaky performance in Saturday night’s debate gives Bush and Christie, who led the charge, hope that his momentum may stall just in time.

Bush, who took less than 3 percent of the vote in Iowa despite outspending all of his rivals over six months of campaigning in the state, has had a harder time generating the same kind of visible enthusiasm. The contrast is sharp. Bush drew just 250 people to a small junior high school auditorium in Derry Thursday night even with the added draw of seeing his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush; although 700 people showed up for a Saturday morning rally in Bedford, forcing the fire marshal to turn some people away.

While Rubio has sought to present himself as the embodiment of a new future for the GOP and the country, Bush is selling a record of governance that’s a decade old and a family pitch that’s heavy on nostalgia for the past—a time when candidates didn’t swear on the stump as Trump does. “Look, I'm no fuddy-duddy,” Bush told supporters with his mother looking on. “But this should be at least [PG]-rated. I mean, we're running for president of the United States. There are children listening to this stuff!”

Increasingly, Bush is punching up at his former protégé, who he insists remains “a close friend.” His campaign quickly cut an ad from Rick Santorum’s disastrous TV interview in which the former candidate-turned-Rubio backer couldn’t name anything when asked about the senator’s accomplishments. And Bush himself is hitting that note on the stump, although he often deadens the attack by lumping Rubio together with Cruz.

“Two gifted freshmen senators that can deliver a great speech,” is how Bush referenced the two at his town hall in Derry. “But what in their background is there to know they can make a tough decision?”

The other problem is Kasich, whose crossover support from independent voters may help him finish ahead of Bush. The Ohio governor lacks Bush’s South Carolina network and national infrastructure, and his moderate message, however resonant in New Hampshire, may not play in more conservative states. But it’s hard to see him dropping out after New Hampshire if he finishes ahead of Bush.

It may be hard to see Bush convincing donors of long-term viability if he finishes fourth or fifth in a state he’s been committing resources to for months. But some donors see the national infrastructure Bush has built—he’s on the ballot in more than 40 states—and the unsettled field as reasons for him to carry on through March.

“Kasich changed the law in Ohio to make [the state’s March 15 primary] winner take all—you think he’s going to just quit? All of these guys, if they’re splitting up the pie, have an incentive to stay in and see what happens,” another long-time Bush backer said. “Jeb may not win, but he can still win enough delegates to negotiate a convention speaking slot or to prevent Trump from getting the 51 percent so his name is put in nomination.”

And so his team soldiers on, making the case, outwardly optimistic. A testimonial from Florida lawmakers about Bush’s strong leadership ran Sunday in New Hampshire newspapers. “Excitement is building here in New Hampshire and we can feel the momentum on the ground,” Bush’s campaign finance director Heather Larrison, wrote in an email blast to donors on Friday.

If it exists, it is a manufactured sort of excitement.

At the end of his 90-minute town hall in Derry last week, as he thanked the crowd and encouraged them to approach him and his mother for handshakes and pictures, a small group of Bush supporters, many of them “alums” who traveled up from Florida, attempted to start a chant.

“Jeb! Jeb! Jeb!” they yelled in unison.

But the chant did not spread and was over after 10 seconds.