WAUKEE, Iowa — Vivek Ramaswamy is running out of time and going all out.

With his polling stuck in neutral, a trio of rivals sucking up much of the media oxygen, and ominous reports circulating about the future of his campaign, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and novice GOP presidential candidate is crisscrossing Iowa in a race to stay relevant — hoping to deliver a shocking finish in Monday’s Iowa caucus.

“The energy we’re seeing on the ground in Iowa is electric, and that level of turnout and excitement is far surpassing the cratering DeSantis and Astroturfed Haley campaigns,” campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told The Post this week.

“We’re going to finish in the top three. Mark my words.”

Ramaswamy has cultivated an extremely online persona during his campaign, never more so than when he argued during a November debate that Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk should be the moderators.

But he has fans in real life, too.

Jing Kan, 41, from Urbandale, ran into Ramaswamy at a local gym in May of last year and became an enthusiastic supporter — particularly of the candidate’s pro-free speech ethos.

“I have never seen a political candidate reaching out to people in the gyms,” he told The Post after a Ramaswamy event at a local restaurant.

“He’s very approachable,” added Kan, a native of Shanghai who will caucus for the first time Monday.

Some of the voters that Ramaswamy attracts to his events aren’t committed, but rather curious and eager to hear him out.

“I’ll decide on Monday night,” Greg Miller, 57, from Boone, told The Post Wednesday. “I appreciate what he stands for. I think he did a really nice job.”

“Right now it shifts,” added 65-year-old Dan Joiliet of Des Moines. “I like what Nikki Haley says.”

Ramaswamy has boasted about going to bed at 3 a.m. and waking up for the day no later than 6 a.m. during some of his grueling days on the campaign stump.

Between stops, he calls voters from the car or bus, urging them to vote for him.

As presidential candidates go, Ramaswamy is surprisingly nonchalant about last-minute schedule changes.

On Wednesday, he sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, which Ramaswamy seemingly found out about minutes before it took place.

There has been a greater need for improvisation this week due to the winter weather, which forced Ramaswamy to bump three events Tuesday — a day after he knocked Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, for doing the same.

On Tuesday evening, Ramaswamy was forced to headline an in Pella, Iowa remotely via iPad due to slick roads and hazardous driving conditions.

Despite the obstacles, the campaign claims Ramaswamy will have completed at least 390 events by Jan. 15. For comparison, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign claims to have completed some 240 events thus far.

The hard work likely won’t come close to paying off, and the vultures are circling.

Multiple Republican officials claim to have fielded job inquiries from Ramaswamy campaign staffers as far back as November, Axios reported Tuesday.

One applicant expressed willingness to start in February — after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, but before caucuses and primaries in Nevada and South Carolina.

Ramaswamy disputed that report and called the news outlet “crap” during a brief gaggle with reporters Tuesday evening that doubled as a scolding session.

“Classic mainstream media lying nonsense … part of an establishment trying to count us out,” he sneered at one point. “You know what, I’ve done more events than every other candidate combined.”

Polls also paint a bleak picture for Ramaswamy, who has rented an apartment in Des Moines as his staging ground from which to barnstorm the Hawkeye State.

According to the latest RealClearPolitics average, Ramaswamy sits at 6.8% in Iowa, behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (15.2%), Haley (17.2%) and former President Donald Trump (53.6%)

“We’re finding that about 50% of attendees are not registered Republicans,” McLaughlin claimed (Iowa rules do allow same-day party registration at caucus sites). “[Ramaswamy support is] not being captured in polls.”

Ramaswamy missed out on another potential platform when he failed to qualify for Wednesday night’s CNN debate alongside Haley and DeSantis.

In addition, he wasn’t invited to take part in a solo town hall by Fox News this week — while Haley, DeSantis and Trump all were.

Lest you think Ramaswamy is being completely ignored by cable news, FNC’s 10 p.m. host Greg Gutfeld has offered the candidate the chance to appear on Gutfeld’s eponymous, freewheeling panel show.

To counteract the CNN and Fox snubs, Ramaswamy went further online, joining podcasters and conservative internet stars Tim Pool and Candace Owens for a live show opposite both the Haley-DeSantis debate and the Trump town hall.

Despite what the signs and tea leaves are saying, Ramaswamy’s hard core of support is still there.

His Iowa co-chairman Matt Schultz, the state’s former secretary of state, recounted to voters this week that he supported past caucus winners Rick Santorum and Sen. Ted Cruz, despite pessimistic prognostications.

“I’m hoping there’s a little magic as we move in into this campaign,” Schultz said.

“Everything I love about Donald Trump — a political outsider, businessman, somebody who wants to drain the swamp — is Vivek. And things I don’t like about Donald Trump, but we’ll just call it the drama or distractions is not Vivek.”

Ramaswamy has been resolute that he’s in the 2024 contest for the long haul.

But last month, the campaign confirmed that he won’t be on the March 19 primary ballot in Illinois, whose delegates account for some 2.5% of the national total.

“We decided as a team a month ago that we’re not going to play there. Your [return on investment] wouldn’t be worth it,” McLaughlin said.

At the moment, his campaign intends to be on the ballot in all the other 49 states as well as all six US territories that hold nominating contests as well as Washington, DC.

But missing out on the chance to pick up delegates anywhere is usually a bad sign for a candidate.

Prior to dropping out, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie missed out on the ballot in Maine, while Haley is set to partake in Nevada’s non-binding primary instead of the Silver State caucus, which will have the actual delegates in play.

Regardless of how Iowa turns out for Ramaswamy, he has already achieved a considerable rise from political obscurity.

Despite being an author and occasional cable news guest, Ramaswamy launched his campaign in February 2023 as a little-known political entity who had never held political office before.

Many media outlets quickly dubbed Ramaswamy a longshot, but he managed to hang in the race longer than Christie or other political veterans like Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Part of that may be due to Ramaswamy’s fealty to Trump and his defense of his Make America Great Again ideology — to an extent that critics have accused him of being the 45th president’s puppet.

“I think there’s two America first candidates in this race,” Ramaswamy said during a recent event in Iowa. “That’s Donald Trump and me.” 

He has also warned about a convoluted “trap” that he believes the “establishment” is setting up for the GOP.

“[The establishment] wants to narrow this down to be a horse race between Donald Trump and a puppet who they can control, to then eliminate Trump from contention such that the controllable puppet becomes the next president,” he told The Post Tuesday.

Ramaswamy ducked the question of whether or not selecting Trump as the nominee would spring that purported trap when pressed by The Post, though he has — audaciously and counterintuitively — left open the prospect of making Trump his running mate.

Ramaswamy’s loyalty has not gone unnoticed by the man himself.

“He will, I am sure, Endorse me,” Trump posted on Truth Social late last year. “But Vivek is a good man, and is not done yet! [sic]”