Dave Caron is exactly the sort of person whom you might expect to support Rick Santorum, the socially conservative former senator whose strong showing in Iowa has catapulted him to the heart of the Republican race.

Caron, an air traffic controller, is deeply Christian and thoroughly committed. When he heard Santorum would be appearing nearby, he took a day off work, packed his wife and five home-schooled children in a van and drove to Tilton, New Hampshire, where Santorum was visiting a local diner.

The Caron family, with one infant daughter holding a "Welcome to New Hampshire, Mr Santorum" sign, greeted their Republican candidate enthusiastically, and Caron did not hide his reasoning for supporting him. "I have no doubt that religious people are very good people. There is no doubt about that. It shows they have consistent principles," he explained.

Outside the pink and neon Tilt'n Diner the Caron family van was parked, covered with anti-abortion slogans and painted children's handprints. Caron confessed that in hard economic times it had been a tough decision to pay for the petrol to get here. "We are making sacrifices. We are on one income. We had to decide to spend money on gas," he said.

People like the Carons – religious social conservatives – lay behind Santorum's shock success in almost beating frontrunner Mitt Romney in Iowa. But Santorum's problem, as the previous outsider candidate pivots to embrace his moment in the national spotlight, is that they have a much reduced role in the current vital state of New Hampshire.