REUTERS/Jeff Haynes

Michele Bachmann greeting customers at the Black Bear Diner in Sioux City.

DES MOINES, Iowa — It was only a 96-second-long speech, maybe the shortest of Michele Bachmann’s presidential bid, and its sole purpose was to energize the volunteers who had descended on her Urbandale, Iowa, campaign headquarters to make last-second get-out-the-vote phone calls before  today’s Iowa caucuses. But in an instant, the Minnesota congresswoman who has seen her support fade at an almost historic rate acknowledged Monday that it will take nothing less than divine intervention to pull an upset in the Iowa caucuses.

“Tomorrow night, we are going to see a miracle,” she said as she stood in the bed of a truck. “We know the one who gives miracles. We can’t wait for tomorrow night. It’s going to be exciting.”

Bachmann spent Monday meeting with supporters, would-be voters, campaign volunteers and Iowa and national media, looking to rally support ahead of tonight’s highly anticipated caucuses. Polling suggests Bachmann will need a surprisingly strong showing if she hopes to avoid finishing as low as sixth place (out of the six major candidates who are competing here). A last place finish in the caucuses would be unprecedented for the winner of the ostensibly predictive Ames Straw Poll.

But Bachmann was characteristically optimistic when she talking to her staff in the 19-degree chill Monday night.

“The months of work that we have been doing, the 99-county tour we completed, all the seeds that we have sown are about to be harvested,” she said.

“There is seed time and there is harvest, and tomorrow night is the harvest.”

Bachmann began her day visiting a small business district in West Des Moines. She crammed into a tiny diner filled with dozens of patrons and a huge flock of press, the size of which only became evident when she moved down the street to a pet supply store.

Mingled in the crowd of onlookers were potential voters, like Mel Ellis, a West Des Moines resident who said he lives in the former residence of Bachmann’s brother.

Ellis is yet to find a candidate he likes, and said he plans on staying that way until right up to the time the caucuses begin tonight. He’s considering Bachmann, saying her “constitutional conservatism” is something that’s “badly missing from our leadership.” He’s also looking for a candidate who can balance the right level of conservatism with electability.

Marilyn Romine of Urbandale received a private stump speech from Bachmann in the doorway of the Diggity Dog pet supply store. The candidate gave her a run-down of her positions on foreign policy and health care reform, among other things, and Romine said she came away impressed, but not quite convinced enough to fully support Bachmann.

“I’m not going to say I’ve made up my mind totally, but she’s very well-spoken, she’s articulate and she certainly addresses the issues that are important to me," she said.

Not everyone Bachmann chatted with would be casting votes for her tonight. At one point, she met with a group of students from Minnesota’s Breck High School. The students were in town to learn about the caucuses first-hand, and staked out the Bachmann event after attending a Ron Paul rally earlier in the day.

“For me, it’s about the caucus experience,” Tom Bergen, 18, said, noting that he’s undecided heading into the election year. “I’m still trying to see the field. Obama is interesting, Ron Paul is interesting, Mitt Romney is a bit interesting. They’re all kind of on the board.”

In all, Bachmann met with probably a hundred would-be voters during her hour-long stop, far fewer than the hordes of Iowans that turned to see other candidates throughout the day. Rick Santorum, who has seen his support surge in the days before the caucuses, drew several hundred supporters at a town hall meeting in Newton, Iowa, and Romney capped his day off with a massive rally in the town of Clive. Santorum, Romney and Paul have been showing the strongest polling numbers in the Iowa campaign’s final days. 

Bachmann has a robust schedule today — she’s scheduled seven radio or television interviews and will attend a "rock the caucus event" in the morning before addressing a caucus site in Black Hawk County, where she launched her campaign for president in June.

In the evening, she holds a rally with supporters in West Des Moines. She’s promised to leave the state on Wednesday and head to South Carolina, regardless of the results of the caucuses.