The people at his town halls are different, too. It’s no longer a huge, loud, excited crowd of millennials who can recite from memory every proposal listed on his website. These are people who have caucused before, take their responsibilities seriously, and will need to be convinced. Many of them show up not sure whether Yang's campaign is a stunt. Yang says his job is to show them it's not.

“My family is a family of academics and professors. I'm kind of the runt of the litter. I've never been a professor. But I do like to inform and teach,” Yang told POLITICO. “And so if there are inquisitive voters who show up I'm excited to give them the substance of the campaign in a way that's different than if it's a Yang Gang rally.”

These are the settings where his aides think Yang thrives: surprising people. After running on stage, still having the most fun of anyone running for president, he starts with a joke about the crowd size: "I'm going to give a 'Trumpian' answer. There are 800 people here." The crowd, not even one-tenth that size, eats it up.

Then he launches into his theory of why President Donald Trump got elected: “Over the last number of years, we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in the Midwest.” The stump speech is heavy on gloom and doom, leavened by jokes.

“It's hard to convey the substance of our campaign in a 60-second sound bite or a brief talk show appearance. So when people understand the true foundations of this campaign then they realize that underneath this person that maybe they thought was likeable is a lot of substance and commitment,” Yang says on the campaign bus. “And then they realize that you don't necessarily need to be dour and serious at all times to be serious and committed as a presidential candidate.”

Yang's focus is on intimate town halls in places that other candidates might be ignoring in favor of the relatively dense suburbs of Des Moines.

“We're targeting some of those rural areas in this state. Where if you've got those 20 people, 40 people to caucus for you, you win that precinct, you win that county,” said campaign manager Zach Graumann. “We're not running a foolish campaign. We're being targeted and smart. We know where we stand and what we're doing.”

They think they are peaking at the right time, reaching 7 percent in some surveys. After missing the last debate, Yang qualified for the next one. He's trying to create and ride a small wave that goes beyond memes and podcasts and connects with older voters who actually caucus.

At the end of each event, Yang’s staffers hand out comment cards for people to fill out. It asks for two rankings: Where the person had Yang in their order of candidate preference before hearing him speak, and then after hearing him.

The card is a symbol of Yang’s campaign. They acknowledge that many people still view him as the wisecracking Asian guy who wants to give every American adult $1,000 a month. He’s still a novelty to many people and they’re not sure what to make of him.

Bill Mullen, an educator, was undecided before hearing Yang in Creston, Iowa. But he said he is now committed to caucusing for Yang after moving him up from fourth on his list. “He has great ideas of what we need to do to improve the economic issues of our country. I like the idea of bringing that [UBI] money back to the local economies and letting people decide what to do with it,” Mullens said.

Susie Olsen of Greenfield, Iowa, moved Yang from not even being in her top five to second, “I always thought he was a really bright, interesting man, but I had absolutely no thought about caucusing for him before tonight,” Olsen said.

Olsen said the town square in her small city used to be bustling with mom and pop shops, but those are all gone now because of online retailers like Amazon. Yang’s main message about the toll of computer automation and technology on communities seemed to resonate with voters. It hits on the economic anxiety that partly helped take Donald Trump win, but delivered with less anger.

Publicly, Yang tells Iowans he’s ready to “win in Iowa,” but behind the scenes his campaign is under no illusions. They feel confident their rural strategy can yield a fifth-place finish and give them enough to move on to New Hampshire with their heads held high.

“We've looked at the numbers and we're seeing real pockets of strength in these places. And we think we can do really well in some places that some of the other candidates haven't spent as much time” in, Yang said. That campaign, he added, is "adapting to our position in the race and not pretending that we're one of the folks who was a household name.”