Des Moines, Iowa — For months, Scott Walker dominated the polls in Iowa.

And then, all of a sudden, he didn’t.

The latest Iowa polls show two political outsiders, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, surging ahead of Walker in the state that will hold the first nominating contest in February. It’s almost six months until voters go to the polls, but after months as the man to beat in the Hawkeye State — a perception fueled at times by his own campaign –Walker arrived at the State Fair on Monday battling the perception that he’s starting to lag, and with questions about whether he can right his course.

His advisers say they’re not concerned.

“You know, look, he’s told everyone that he’s gonna compete in Iowa, he’s gonna come here, and I don’t think a week of snap polls is a reflection of anything,” says Walker adviser David Polyansky, the architect of Iowa senator Joni Ernst’s Senate victory last November.

An early win in Iowa is Walker’s most obvious path to the nomination, and his campaign preparations are evidence of how seriously he is looking for a win here. The super PAC backing Walker recently announced a $7 million ad buy in the state, which is set to run from September through the caucuses in February. After his announcement, Walker spent a day each in Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. And then he spent several days in Iowa. He has, according to his campaign, 65 Iowa Republicans on his leadership team. With that kind of buildup, some Iowa Republicans say his failure to win the caucuses would be a problem.

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“Governor Walker needs to perform strongly in Iowa,” former Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn tells National Review in an e-mail. “A key element of his pitch is electability that includes putting Upper Midwest states like Iowa back into the Republican electoral vote column in November 2016.”

“A weak February 1 Iowa Caucus finish would be a big, big problem,” Strawn adds, “but it is way too early for the Walker team to hit the panic button.”

An early win in Iowa is Scott Walker’s most obvious path to the nomination, and his campaign preparations are evidence of how seriously he is looking for a win here.

Polls in the sleepy summer season before voters are really tuned in have not been, in recent years, a strong indicator of who will win the caucuses. But declining in polls, whenever it happens, can be indicative of a larger problem. Last cycle, many candidates had a moment at the top of the polls, but once they fell, they never returned.

Craig Robinson, former Iowa GOP political director and editor-in-chief of The Iowa Republican, says that at this point in the game, a drop in the polls could be “problematic” because it’s “going to be hard for him to regain his footing.”

More problematic for Walker is the way his campaign has trumpeted his role as the one to beat.

“I used to run track, and sometimes I’d come from behind, and my coach would tell me, ‘Scott, it’s much better off if you just stay ahead the whole time.’ So I guess I’ll follow his adage in that respect,” Walker told National Review in June, before his official campaign launch.

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In July, just before he officially announced, his advisers told the Washington Post they expected Walker to win Iowa.

Polyansky won’t say where Walker would need to place in the caucuses to emerge in a position to win the nomination.

“I don’t know who said that, so I can’t really speak to it,” he says of the Washington Post’s report. “He just wants to continue to compete and be successful. I’m not gonna even speak for him. What I’m gonna say is we’re gonna work our tails off; these kids are doing just that. I think this message is going to continue to resonate here,” he says.

A Walker spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about whether the campaign still expects Walker to win Iowa.

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Part of Walker’s problem, say some Iowa Republicans, is to figure out how to recapture the fire that catapulted him to the top of the polls in the first place. That happened organically in January at the Iowa Freedom Summit hosted by Republican representative Steve King, but the enthusiasm generated by that performance can be difficult to sustain.

“It’s kind of like when you first go out, the first game of the season, you might be looking pretty good then,” says King. “But all teams get better as the season goes on. And so the other candidates polish their game; Scott Walker also needs to do that and stay ahead of his competition.”

Walker’s debate performance in Cleveland earlier this month seems to have diminished some of the initial enthusiasm for his candidacy.

#related#“The debate showed us that maybe how Scott Walker’s perceived by a lot of Iowans isn’t necessarily the Scott Walker they saw in the debate,” says Robinson. “They think he’s a conservative reformer, and really what you saw in the debate . . . it wasn’t that. It was kind of this short answers to questions, political sound bites; it wasn’t this movement conservative . . . willing to take tough chances. When that perception doesn’t match the reality, I think it causes voters to look elsewhere.”

Walker recaptured some of that fire Monday at the fair. During his speech at the Des Moines Register Soapbox, he was engulfed by a crowd that included about four dozen union protesters. They had taken a bus from Wisconsin to interrupt the governor’s speech. Two women from the Iowa chapter of the Service Employees International Union told National Review before the speech they planned to be “Iowa nice,” but as Walker spoke, protesters in cheesehead hats and wearing the SEIU’s signature purple color heckled the governor, yelling at him that he is “full of sh**.”

Walker pushed right through it. He spoke faster and louder and finally turned to address the protesters head on. “I am not intimidated by you, sir,” he said, pointing to a man near the front of the stage, “or anyone else.”

It was a moment when voters could see firsthand the story Walker is telling the country about himself: that he went up against the unions and won, twice, and that he will not be shouted down.

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The big question mark for Republicans now is Donald Trump, who has scrambled the field in a way that makes the ultimate outcome all but impossible to predict.

“We’re in uncharted political waters no one has ever seen,” King says..

As Walker’s story becomes better known, says Walker adviser Robert O’Brien, people disillusioned with politicians and expressing that in their support for outsider candidates such as Trump and Carson “are going to look at Walker as someone who can express their disappointment at the business-as-usual approach in Washington and be somebody who’s qualified to go in there and make a difference.”

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Or, Donald Trump will continue to confound the predictions and expectations of the political class. Some Republican consultants are now weighing the Trump factor into their calculations.

“I think in any state you can lose to Trump and be fine,” says Iowa Republican consultant Cory Crowley, who is backing Kasich. But, he says, if that’s the case for Walker in Iowa, “you have to win among the others.”

For now, at least, that may be the new benchmark for Walker and his team.