“Just because you get X number of delegates, it doesn’t mean that it’s your people unless you go to these conventions and get people to run,” said Marco Rubio’s deputy campaign manager Rich Beeson. “You want to make sure that they’re with you on subsequent ballots.”

Rubio, who openly contemplated the possibility of a contested convention in an AP interview last week, is not the only candidate whose campaign is preparing to contest the shadow primary.

One Southern state party chairman said that the calls from campaigns seeking data – such as contact information on eligible delegates and the names of people who have served as delegates in past years – began in late 2015. The chairman said calls have also come from third-party vendors who declined to identify which campaigns are their clients. “There’s a bit of skuldugerry … I suspect some super PACs are behind some of this.”

Toby Neugebauer, a Cruz super PAC megadonor who has long maintained that this nominating contest would be drawn out, said he has invested in custom delegate-tracking software but did not provide further details of his efforts on that front.