With only a few shopping days left until the Iowa Caucus, Ron Paul’s state chairman said this weekend that a giant question mark for the campaign is whether his enthusiastic supporters will actually turn out to vote on January 3.

“Clearly the majority, meaning at least 51 percent, of the Ron Paul people have never been involved in politics or only minimally,” Drew Ivers, Paul’s state chairman, told the Iowa Independent. “So the point is to get them to realize that saying `rah, rah Ron Paul,’ or putting a sign in the front yard, or talking to the neighbors about his strengths, just isn’t enough. The only thing that matters is that they go to their caucus and write Ron Paul’s name on a slip of paper when it comes time to vote.

“Probably, mentally, they understand that,” Ivers continued. “But psychologically, I am not sure we, as a campaign, have gotten that to really sink in.”Like the rest of the field, Paul staffers are hustling this weekend to find ways to optimize the visiblity of his very vocal supporters. The campaign is making telephone calls to Republicans across the state gauging Paul’s support in the state and has run newspaper ads in several small town newspapers in the state as well as airing television ads in several markets.

One poll released this week showed Paul with support of 10 percent of likely voters, but Ivers said that might not be an accurate reflection of how the campaign will perform because first-time voters often aren’t included in those surveys.

“Our own polls show that we’re looking pretty decent among registered Republicans if we can just motivate them to go to the caucuses,” Ivers said.

Paul, who is campaigning extensively in New Hampshire and in Western states, has spent just 19 days in Iowa. Those events have drawn crowds of up to 800 people, many of them ardent Paul supporters.

“One of the things I keep telling our people is that we don’t want the Ron Paul people there, we want the new people there. We need you to bring them,” Ivers said.

They’ll get a chance on Wednesday when Paul returns to the state for one last round of campaigning. He’s going to make an appearance at the John Deere plant in Ankeny midday (no official time has been announced) and will make a foreign policy speech at the Hotel Fort Des Moines at 7 p.m. at an event featuring military veterans who have endorsed his candidacy. Thursday he’ll speak at Des Moines University at noon.