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Mitt Romney in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Seen as the strongest challenger to President Obama, he is still struggling to solidify his lead. 
DES MOINES — Mitt Romney sought to convert his tentative standing atop the polls into a first-place finish in the caucuses here, telling Iowans on Sunday that he had the “capability to go the full distance” against President Obama, as his rivals beseeched voters not to settle on a candidate lacking full commitment to their conservative values.
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Representative Ron Paul was in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in a poll released Saturday night. Just as confidence had been rising among Mr. Romney and his aides that they could pull off a win here on Tuesday night, they were faced with a new challenge from Rick Santorum, who emerged as the latest in a rotating cast of surging alternatives, ebullient about his rising standing in the polls and support from excited crowds on Sunday in Sioux City and Rock Rapids.
“Don’t put forward somebody who isn’t good enough to do what’s necessary to change this country,” Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said at a town-hall-style meeting in Sioux City, feeding off his new status as a real contender here. “Put forward someone that you know has the vision, the trust, the authenticity, the background, the record to make that happen.”
Still decidedly in the mix was Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning congressman from Texas, whose dedicated followers could still propel him into the lead on Tuesday night and in the nominating contests that will unfold in the coming months.
Even though the Republican race remained fluid, the Democratic Party stepped up its involvement in the opposing contest, and several aides to the president’s re-election team arrived here to open a war room at a downtown hotel. The prime target was Mr. Romney.
They held a news conference to highlight Mr. Romney’s record as chief executive of the private equity firm Bain Capital, introducing an Indiana worker who was laid off in the early 1990s when his company was bought by Bain.
Iowa’s caucuses do not have an especially good record of predicting Republican nominees. But the result here could be an indicator of whether Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is succeeding in rallying conservatives behind him or whether he faces months of struggle to win delegates and resolve the rifts within the party.
After months of campaigning, a long series of debates and the rise and fall of one challenger after another, no one has yet shown that they can knock off Mr. Romney. Despite running a largely mistake-free campaign, Mr. Romney has yet to prove that he can break through the ceiling of support of about 25 percent in many polls that has defined his candidacy in a fractured field.
Mr. Romney’s campaign aides were watching Mr. Santorum’s new strength carefully. They said that while they were satisfied that Mr. Santorum’s rise was further fracturing the anti-Romney vote among him, Mr. Paul, Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, they could take nothing for granted when only half of likely Iowa caucusgoers say they have committed to a candidate.
And on a day when all but the most politically involved Iowans were at home celebrating the new year and watching football, Mr. Romney’s campaign workers were calling the homes of potentially supportive caucusgoers they have been recruiting for months, wishing a happy new year to their families and offering a gentle reminder to attend the caucuses.
Mr. Romney’s campaign had been optimistic enough about a possible victory here that it decided over the weekend to keep him in Iowa through Tuesday night to be in place for nationally televised interviews from Des Moines on Wednesday morning — a sign that they expected him to be talking about good news here.
But a senior aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, played down the importance of a first-place showing, saying that “our strategy was never based on a win in Iowa” and that the campaign would be “happily surprised” if he were to secure one.
Preparing for a potentially longer fight, Mr. Romney’s strategists in Boston were increasingly turning their focus on New Hampshire, South Carolina and the biggest January primary state, Florida, where voters are receiving absentee ballots this week. The campaign has been aggressively working to get out the early vote there, and Mr. Romney’s advertising team has begun to inquire about ad rates across the state.
Reporting was contributed by Jill Abramson from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Michael Barbaro and Sarah Wheaton from Des Moines.
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