AFTER its first clear success at the Republican primaries in Wisconsin on April 5th, the Never Trump alliance sought to replicate its triumph in Indiana, which goes to the polls on May 3rd. Wisconsin’s Republican grandees, conservative talk-show hosts and the efficient campaign machine of Ted Cruz, the Texas senator spearheading the Never Trump brigade, managed to persuade Republican primary voters that Mr Cruz was the true conservative in the mould of Scott Walker, the governor still very popular among Wisconsin Republicans, and they voted in droves for Mr Cruz. In Indiana an equivalent coalition pushed even harder to portray Mr Cruz as the bearer of the conservative flame—and Donald Trump as a vulgar impostor. For a while, their efforts seemed to bear fruit. Yet after Mr Trump’s triumphs in five primary elections in the north-east on April 26th, his gravitational pull seems stronger than ever. According to a poll by NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist, released on May 1st, Mr Trump holds a 15-point lead over Mr Cruz in Indiana with 49% of the votes compared with 34%. For weeks Mr Cruz has sought to portray Indiana as the all-important turning point in the campaign, so a poor result would be a devastating blow for the pugnacious Cuban-American. His jam-packed schedule on May 2nd shows how hard he is trying with Hoosiers. After a breakfast stop in rural Osceola, he visited Marion alongside Indiana’s governor, Mike Pence, who has endorsed him, albeit belatedly and unenthusiastically. Then Mr Cruz raced to a rally in Fort Wayne, a stronghold of evangelicals, still with Governor Pence in tow. His next stop was in Bloomington, one of the state’s big cities and the home of Indiana University. The day ended with a rally in Indianapolis, the state capital.

Mr Cruz also dispatched Carly Fiorina, whom he anointed as his running mate last week in Indianapolis, to five different events around that city. He called to arms Mike Lee, the Utah senator who seems to be his only friend in the Senate, as well as Louie Gohmert, a Congressman from Texas who backs him, Glenn Beck, a conservative radio host, and Heidi Cruz, his steadfastly supportive wife. And he deployed his father, Rafael Cruz, an evangelical minister, to tour in churches in parts of Indiana where evangelicals and Christian conservatives hold enormous sway.

Indiana, which calls itself the “crossroads of America”, offers 57 delegates, the biggest haul besides California, which will vote on June 7th. Thirty of its delegates are winner-takes-all; 27 are awarded proportionally, according to results in nine congressional districts, which means that the state’s winner gets a sizable chunk of the 57. Indiana is also the only state to vote on May 3rd, setting the tone for remaining contests.

In many ways Indiana seems to be a perfect state for the Cruz-Fiorina duo. It has an unusually high population of evangelical Christians fiercely supportive of Governor Pence, who recently signed the most restrictive legislation on abortion in the country. It also has a relatively high proportion of well-educated middle-class whites, who tend to favour Mr Cruz over Mr Trump, though mainly because they are told this is the politically expedient choice. Their real favourite is John Kasich, the only other candidate still in the Republican race, but the governor of Ohio has ceased campaigning in Indiana thanks to a recent pact with Mr Cruz. (In return Mr Cruz ceased campaigning in Oregon and New Mexico.) In addition, the local Republican elite has a visceral dislike of Mr Trump. “Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States,” said John Hammond, one of Indiana’s two members of the Republican National Committee, in an interview a couple of months ago. Mr Hammond accuses Mr Trump of destroying the GOP brand.

Yet Mr Trump has a big fan club among the state’s blue-collar workers in places such as Elkhart County in northern Indiana, where nearly half of all jobs are in manufacturing (mostly recreational vehicles). On the evening of May 2nd Mr Trump made an appearance in South Bend, a former industrial city now mainly known for its Notre Dame University, which sits in the county next to Elkhart. His supporters began lining up in front of the Century Centre in South Bend, where Mr Trump was scheduled to appear, before noon. Lou Holtz, a legendary Notre Dame football coach, endorsed Mr Trump, as has Bobby Knight, a once very popular Indiana University basketball coach with a famous temper. Mike Tyson, a boxer, also recently endorsed Mr Trump. (“All the tough guys endorse me, I like that,” commented Mr Trump.)

Mr Trump is playing to his blue-collar audience. For months he has attacked Carrier Corporation, a maker of heating and air-conditioning systems, which announced in February that it would close two Indiana factories and transfer about 1,400 heating and air-conditioning jobs to Mexico. "If I was in office, Carrier wouldn't be leaving," Mr Trump said at a recent rally in Indianapolis, without much of an explanation. "Do you like the idea of taxing the hell out of those air conditioners?" he asked a couple of Carrier workers in the audience.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is soldiering on. He held rallies at several locations on May 2nd: Evansville in the morning, Fort Wayne in the early afternoon and Indianapolis in the evening. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, held her last rally in Indiana on May 1st and then embarked on a tour of Appalachia, with stops in West Virginia and Kentucky, two states that will vote in the Democratic primary this month. Most polls show Mrs Clinton narrowly ahead of Mr Sanders in Indiana. Mr Sanders tends to do well in largely white states, such as Indiana, but culturally Hoosiers, especially in the state’s southern parts, have much in common with southerners who have overwhelmingly voted for Mrs Clinton.

Mr Trump is hoping to land a knock-out blow to Mr Cruz on May 3rd, paving a safer path to the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the nomination. (At the moment Mr Trump is past the mark of 1,000 delegates, but some of them are not “bound”, which means they are not required to vote for him.) Mrs Clinton is hoping to do the same, though with less bellicose rhetoric than the Republican front-runner.