One such voter is Michelle Visser, 46, a homeschooling mother who lives in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, who brought her daughter to a Rubio town hall in nearby Laconia. Visser said she was torn between Cruz and Rubio, finding both senators articulate avatars of the conservative philosophy.

“Now that I see what happened in Iowa, I came off the fence,” Visser said in an interview. “I hope the Trump supporters are going to wisen up and realize that he can’t even begin to be elected, and they’ll go to Rubio, too.”

Cruz’s campaign believes it’s more likely that Rubio voters will defect to Cruz than the other way around, said former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien, a statewide co-chairman of the Cruz campaign. He cited the perception that Rubio backed away from opposition to a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“I don’t see how our voters are going to drift in his direction at all,” O’Brien said. “They’re concerned that Senator Rubio is a little bit like Donald Trump, and he’ll say what it takes to get our votes.”