CONWAY, SC—Fifteen minutes after telling the audience they were on the last question, Jeb Bush was still center stage. And after 95 minutes at the mic, the candidate who has been floundering on the stump and sinking in the polls for months was still running on a full tank. He looked around the packed auditorium on the Coastal Carolina campus and knew he’d accomplished something unusual.

He’d won the crowd.

It first happened when he stood up to a woman who said she was supporting Donald Trump. “I'm not going to speak about Donald Trump's plans, because he doesn't have specific plans," Bush said, inducing loud applause that reverberated inside the low-ceilinged rotunda. “Of all the guys and gals on the stage, who's the only person who's balanced eight budgets eight years in a row and left the state with a AAA bond rating going up? Who’s the guy that did it?” he continued, as the crowd shouted its approval.

Moments later, it happened again when a college student asked Bush about Bernie Sanders’ proposal to make college free. “My brother, there’s no such thing as free,” Bush said, prompting another ovation. When a questioner pointed out that students pay lower tuition in Europe, Bush forcefully cut him off. “And they’re bankrupt,” he exclaimed. Once again, the audience whooped it up.

Bush is speaking more forcefully and more emotionally on the stump, and he’s seeing his crowds respond to his policy accomplishments, now repackaged into anecdotes about real people. In fact, he’s doing what he failed so spectacularly to do in the first three Republican debates: effectively fending off criticism and making sure he gets the final word.

It’s thanks to one critical investment: a speaking coach.

The campaign brought in Jon Kraushar, a professional talent coach who typically works with television personalities and politicians, after Bush’s disastrous performance in the third GOP debate in Boulder. And it is finally making the long underperforming Bush a more confident performer on the stump.

While poor candidate performance explains much of Bush’s current predicament as an afterthought in the primary race he was expected to dominate, his improved performance does little to change the broader fundamentals of an anti-establishment electorate eager for someone new.

“The challenge that he’s got is a pretty severe case of Bush fatigue in our party,” said Katie Packer Gage, Mitt Romney’s former deputy campaign manager. “People aren’t enthusiastic about another Bush, and it’s no disrespect to the family or the individual that people are just looking for something new.”

Plus, with his numbers set in after months of failing to connect, the improvements may be too little, too late.

“He could light himself on fire and it wouldn’t move numbers,” said an adviser to a rival campaign.

Bush lost control of the narrative months ago, when Donald Trump upended the race in midsummer and left the big-money juggernaut who was once considered the likeliest GOP nominee stunned by a debate suddenly driven by the businessman’s unexpected scapegoating of undocumented immigrants and his withering critique of the former Florida governor as being “low energy.” 

Improving the delivery of his stump speech alone is unlikely to recalibrate the primary fight so dramatically that Bush can play on his terms. But having hit rock bottom just weeks ago – when his poor performance in the third debate sparked questions about whether he’d even stay in the race – Bush is now campaigning with the freedom of a candidate with nothing left to lose.

“It can’t hurt,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP strategist at Purple Strategies in Washington who is unaffiliated with a 2016 candidate. 

“If he has the financial capacity to remain in the race through the early primaries, which by all indications he does, then the smart thing for the campaign to do is take every step possible to improve the candidate’s performance and his messaging and keep him in position in case a moment arises where you can take advantage of it,” Haynes said. “There are a lot of doubters, but this is his chance to prove them wrong.”

A number of people who attended Bush’s town hall Tuesday night, whether they came as avowed Bush supporters or not, left with a more favorable impression of him after the long discussion.

“I think people are judging him by his younger brother,” said Mary DiLorenzo, who drove from nearby Murrells Inlet to attend Bush’s town hall. “You can’t appreciate him until you come to something like this. I think he related to the audience very well, younger people, older people.”

With at least half of the seats filled by college students, Bush was less programmatic than he often is, seemingly embracing his quirky, sardonic side. 

In mocking the Obama administration’s recent statements about the terrorist group known as ISIS or ISIL, he borrowed from a popular segment on ESPN’s Monday Night Football programming: “C’mon, man,” he quipped. When speaking about diversity, Bush compared the country’s racial makeup to Baskin Robbins: “It’s not chocolate and vanilla,” he said. “We’re 34 flavors and going strong” (technically, the company’s slogan is “31 flavors,” but the crowd didn’t seem to quibble). 

When an older woman stood up and spoke about “Mr. T,” Bush was momentarily at a loss until he realized she was referring to Trump. “I thought you were referring to the guy with the Mohawk for a minute,” he said, drawing laughs.

Moments later, a young college student told Bush he had aspirations of running for president one day before launching into a question by calling Hillary Clinton “a compulsive liar.”

"If you're going to run for president, you might want to tone down the rhetoric a little bit,” Bush responded.

Throughout the two-day swing through South Carolina, Bush made a point of featuring anecdotes about real people in his remarks. Twice Tuesday, he told the story of Dinesha Merriweather, a young African-American student Bush encountered as governor who, he said, came “from the other side of the tracks” and benefitted from the education reforms he enacted as governor and is now in graduate school. 

Addressing about 75 people Tuesday afternoon inside Wholly Smokin’ BBQ in Florence, Bush even took some creative license in painting an imagined scene of when Merriweather first arrived at a Christian school outside of her neighborhood that she was able to attend thanks to a law Bush changed.

“I just imagine—I wasn’t there—but I just know in my heart that that teacher in the first week, when angry little Dinesha showed up in third grade, put her arms around that child and said, ‘I love you, Jesus loves you, you’re capable. In essence, you’re an asset. You’re capable. You can rise up.”

Bush’s efforts to inspire more of an emotional response from audiences come as he is trying hard to meet the moment in the aftermath of last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, presenting himself as a sober, steady leader who, unlike less seasoned rivals, can be trusted to serve as Commander in Chief. In his address Wednesday at The Citadel in Charleston, Bush called for ground troops to combat ISIL and laid out a proposal to restore recent cuts to the military. 

But that is an area where Marco Rubio, Bush’s former Florida understudy who has surged past him in the polls, is also strong. And Rubio, despite Bush’s improvements on the stump, remains arguably the most compelling communicator in the Republican field, as evidenced by one Coastal Carolina student who left Bush’s town hall Tuesday night unconvinced.

“He just doesn’t inspire me,” said Caleb Fongemie, the director of Coastal Carolina Conservatives. “I want a Commander in Chief who inspires me and inspires our country. I think Marco Rubio can do that.”