By late morning on Friday, just three days before the Iowa caucuses, Des Moines seemed like a ghost town. Abandoned cars and trailers dotted icy freeways, victims of a once-in-a-decade blizzard. Most presidential candidates, Nikki Haley included, moved their campaign events online.

But across the state, cohorts of pro-Haley canvassers saw the storm as an opportunity to make a last-minute pitch for their candidate.

“This is perfect weather,” a beaming Greg Adams, grassroots engagement director for Americans For Prosperity-Utah, told me. “If people are snowed in, you know they’re home.”

Adams was one of the dozens of AFP staffers and volunteers trudging through the snow Friday encouraging Iowans to caucus for Haley. Some of the door-knockers were Iowa locals; others, like Adams, are full-time employees in other states that flew in for two weeks of canvassing.

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Ever since the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity Action announced its endorsement of Haley in late November, teams of AFP canvassers have flooded Iowa, knocking on doors and dialing phone numbers. Even before the Haley endorsement, AFP-Iowa had contacted nearly a million voters, a quarter of those through door conversations, selling Iowans on supporting a non-Trump candidate.

“Months ago, (Haley) had consistently been showing improvements in polling despite the lack of a ground operation,” Drew Klein, director of AFP-Iowa, said. Now, while Haley blitzes around the state for town halls and rallies, AFP has independently knocked on 200,000 more doors in her favor. The record for Iowa caucus-night turnout is 180,000; AFP-Iowa says it has contacted several times that many Iowans this election cycle.

But the inclement weather makes it difficult to predict what turnout will be Monday. “It’s definitely going to depress turnout overall,” Klein admitted. The National Weather Service is warning of “life-threatening” blizzards over the weekend, and for Monday, current weather forecasts predict the coldest caucus night on record: a daily high of negative-two on Monday, with the wind chill dipping temperatures to thirty-below by evening.

The forecast wasn’t much better Friday morning, after a nightlong snow storm and temperatures in the low teens. At AFP-Iowa’s office in Urbandale, a suburb west of Des Moines, a group of employees and volunteers sipped coffee and pulled on logoed parkas. Canvassers came from a dozen states to help this week, some venturing from as far as Alaska and Arizona. Other groups gathered in eight counties across Iowa, splitting off to target voters who they think would be open to backing Haley.

This is the most visible arm of AFP Action’s ground game, the benefactors of a $70 million war chest amassed by the Koch network. By early December, AFP Action said it had spent $4 million on pro-Haley mailers and canvassing efforts.

I jumped in a car with Adams and two others: Kevin Greene, the AFP-Utah state director, and Quincy Azini, the strategic director for AFP-Alaska. They opened a map on their phones, overlayed with gray or green dots, signaling homes to visit. Each marker includes public-access information on the voter: if and how they voted in the past, whether they participated in a caucus and what they’ve told past AFP canvassers.

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Adams trudged through knee-deep snow to reach the first door. A middle-aged woman answered. She planned to attend the caucus Monday, she said, but she was still undecided on who she’ll support. Adams told her to consider Haley, handing her a glossy door-hanger advertising the former South Carolina governor as a “strong leader” who will “get the job done.”

Later, a man in his early 30’s said he would like to participate in the caucus, but because he was a registered independent, he knew he couldn’t. Adams explained he could change his voter affiliation at a caucus meeting on-site; the man pledged to go, and said he’d back Haley.

At other homes, most of them with unshovelled driveways and snow-covered walks, Adams explained the caucus process. If they didn’t know where their precinct would be meeting, Adams pulled out his phone and read them the address. If a person said they’d be supporting Trump, Adams encouraged them to support the conservative candidate come November. If they said they were leaning toward Haley, Adams smiled and pled with them to please show up on Monday.

When one homeowner spoke to Adams through his Ring doorbell, explaining he would caucus for Haley but he’s currently vacationing in Florida, Adams told him to invite a friend to go caucus. (“I wonder if DeSantis paid for his flight,” one of the AFP folks later joked.)

In statewide polls, Trump maintains a solid, 20-percentage-point lead, though some of the AFP employees question this. It’s much easier to express support in an online survey or over the phone than it is to show up on a dark, frigid caucus night; in conversations on the doorsteps, a surprising number of voters say they are set on caucusing but are still undecided on their candidate choice. When I went out with AFP door-knockers in November, not a single voter said they were supporting Trump; on Friday, several said they were, but not any more than the number who said they were undecided.

Those are the voters AFP tries to target: the “soft” Trump voters, who are either open to other candidates or are lukewarm about caucusing. The job for AFP canvassers, then, is to get them out on Monday, preferably to vote for Haley.

They express a cautious optimism about Haley’s chances. “If Trump is telling his supporters he’s up by 30 points, I think some of those voters start to say, ‘well, do they actually need me to get out and go to the caucus, if he’s going to win anyway?’” Klein said.