If Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz cannot figure out how to take down front-runner Donald Trump, Republican Party insiders who loath the idea of the brash billionaire as their nominee have one option left — winning at the convention.

The maneuver would not come without risks. A heavy-handed approach invites allegations of rigging the system; it could tear the party apart. What’s more, in the modern era, party officials have only limited influence over a convention that ultimately is in the hands of the delegates.

Still, it is a possibility the campaigns are preparing for.

“The rules were never designed to have everybody drop out after a certain time — it’s just the way it’s worked historically because people have run out of money or they don’t see a path forward,” Rubio told the Associated Press this month. “I don’t think it necessarily is negative.”

It is a long shot and will not come into play if Trump keeps winning. But because so many states award delegates proportionally, accumulating the 1,237 needed to lock down the nomination could prove difficult if Trump’s opponents can win even a handful of big, winner-take-all states.

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If that happens, and Trump’s opponents present a united front at the convention, it is possible that he could be denied the nomination even if he has won the most votes and has the most delegates.

“That’s kind of Plan B right now,” said University of Georgia political scientist Josh Putnam, an expert in the minutia of the parties’ nominating rules. “If an alternative to Trump doesn’t emerge, that may be the only play by the Establishment to try to stop Trump.”

Using a delegate calculator developed by RealClearPolitics, which estimates the number of delegates each candidate would win given the percentage of the raw vote they receive in each state, it is easy to demonstrate how even a commanding string of victories could still leave Trump short.

Here’s one potential scenario.

  • Cruz wins Texas and holds his own in the other Super Tuesday states, doing well enough to accumulate delegates in states he loses and winning a handful of others — in this case, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
  • Rubio wins Florida, which would give him all 99 delegates regardless of how close the vote is. That would mean outperforming polls showing Trump with a big lead, but Florida is the senator’s home state.
  • Kasich wins his home state of Ohio, getting every delegate. He said at a Fox News town hall that if he dropped out, “Donald Trump would win Ohio, and that would be the end of it.”
  • Rubio and Cruz win a smattering of other states and territories. Possible candidates include Colorado and the District of Columbia, where party conventions will select delegates. Insiders might have more control. Cruz could also pick off conservative states like Kansas and Arkansas. He has even taken the extraordinary step of staffing a campaign office in Guam.

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Under this scenario, Trump could win the final 17 contests, finish with 37 states and territories and still fall short by 79 delegates.

Scneario 1

Experts agree that the closer Trump gets to winning outright, the harder it would be to deny him. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told Politico it would “basically create Armageddon with the base.”

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, agreed.

“It would be something of a legitimacy crisis,” he told LifeZette. “There would be a lot people, including Trump, himself, who would be angry about it. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people who don’t want Trump to be the nominee.”

For a convention coup to succeed, Rubio probably would have to perform better. Suppose Cruz fares badly on Super Tuesday, drops out along with Carson, and Kasich leaves on a high note after winning Ohio. That would turn the campaign in the head-to-head contest the Establishment long has wanted. If Rubio could manage to win some larger later-voting states, like California and Pennsylvania, he could draw close enough Trump to make a convention deal possible.

One scenario run by LifeZette results in Trump winning 33 states and 1,068 delegates to Rubio’s 17 states and territories and 977 delegates. The 91-delegate difference might be surmountable in that case.

Scneario 2

Rules bind delegates to the candidate they represent on the first ballot and in some cases, subsequent ballots. The same is true of state party officials who serve as delegates. It is not even clear to what extent delegates, once released, would honor the wishes of the candidates to whom they were originally committed.

Power brokers aren’t what they used to be.

“American politics are a lot less top-down than they were 40 or 50 years ago,” Kondik said.