Former Pennsylvania Sen. and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum will be the first candidate to visit all 99 Iowa counties — a feat he was able to pull off in 2012 that may have catapulted him to victory in the 2012 Iowa Caucus.

Santorum will officially visit his 99th county and complete his second “full Grassley” on Tuesday night during a town hall meeting in Rock Rapids. 

A “full Grassley” was coined after longtime Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley would visit every Iowa county each year. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds try to visit all counties every year, and Iowa U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst has said she will visit every county.

Santorum is in the midst of his second straight run for president after announcing his intention to run in May. He is running on a similar platform he ran on four years ago, again targeting evangelical voters.

Although he may have narrowly won the caucus in 2012, Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science, does not think Santorum’s strategy is going to pay off in 2016.

“This time I don’t think it is going to work,” Schmidt said. “The reason is because there are too many people running, and they are all getting percentages of those [religious] voters to commit to them.”

Currently, Santorum is polling at about 1 percent, or near the bottom of the crowded Republican field, according to the latest Iowa poll released this past weekend by The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics.

Mack Shelley, professor of political science, said one of the reasons Santorum’s numbers are struggling compared to four years ago is the emergence of Donald Trump.

“It probably is related in part to Trump because Trump as they say is taking a lot of air out of the room,” Shelley said. “Not much space for anybody else.”

Even while Santorum is pulling off the entire 99-county haul, Shelley said not to expect the same results Grassley has received in the past.

“When Grassley does it it’s just sort of reinforcing the fact that here I am, I may be a U.S. senator, but I’m one of you, so vote for me,” Shelley said. “Santorum is not in that position because he is not an Iowan to begin with and so he doesn’t honestly have roots here.”

Matthew Beynon, a spokesperson for Santorum, disagrees, saying they expect to do well in February at the caucuses. 

“The senator has always believed that every vote counts and every voter counts,” Beynon said. “Voters aren’t just in Des Moines and there not just in Ames and there not just in Cedar Rapids and there not just in Dubuque. They’re also in Anamosa and they’re in Oskaloosa and they’re in Red Oak and they’re in Rock Rapids. They deserve to hear from candidates too.”