A Complicated Path to the
Democratic Nomination
Bernie Sanders says winning a plurality of delegates is good enough for the nomination.
His rivals say a majority is needed. What does that mean? And why are superdelegates
coming up again?
Superdelegates raised the ire of Bernie Sanders’s supporters in 2016. Credit...Eric Thayer for The
New York Times
Matt Stevens, The New York Times National Edition, February 22, 2020, p. 18.
The last question at Wednesday night’s Democratic debate covered much wonkier
territory than the fiery exchanges that preceded it. But it exposed a rift over what could
become an extremely relevant topic: how the party’s presidential nominee should be
chosen.
“There’s a very good chance none of you are going to have enough delegates to the
Democratic National Convention to clinch this nomination,” the moderator Chuck Todd
told the candidates. “Should the person with the most delegates at the end of this
primary season be the nominee even if they are short of a majority?”
Every four years, pundits imagine such a scenario. But with eight Democrats still in the
2020 race, several of whom could split the available delegates, the premise may be more
than theoretical this time around.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was the only candidate to agree that, in his words,
“the person with the most votes” should get the nomination. This was not surprising
given that he is currently the front-runner and — at least at the moment — appears to be
the candidate most likely to win a plurality, but perhaps not a majority, of pledged
delegates.
The rest of the candidates said some version of “No, let the process work” or “Play by the
rules.” In other words, a candidate should still be required to win a majority of delegates
to earn the nomination.
So what, exactly, are the rules? How would the “process” actually work? What needs to
be done to win a majority? And why was Mr. Sanders complaining about
“superdelegates”? Let’s try to explain.
How to win the Democratic nomination, the easy
way
To win the Democratic nomination for president, a candidate needs the support of a
majority of delegates eligible to vote on a given ballot at the party’s national convention
in Milwaukee in July.
There are a total of 3,979 pledged delegates (who are actual people) eligible to vote on
what is known as the first ballot. These delegates are allocated to candidates based on
the results of caucus and primary contests in the states. The formulas that determine
how those results are translated into delegates won can be complicated, but in general, a
candidate must get 15 percent support to be eligible to receive delegates.
Half of 3,979 is 1,989.5. Democratic National Committee officials say that on the first
ballot, a candidate must win one delegate more than that, or 1,990.5, which is rounded
up to reach the magic number: 1,991. (If a candidate won 1,990 pledged delegates on the
first ballot, D.N.C. officials say, that would not be sufficient.)
So, in summary, the quickest and least complicated way to win the nomination is for a
candidate to secure 1,991 pledged delegates on the first ballot at the Democratic
National Convention in July. (We are keeping track of how many delegates each
candidate has.)
But as Mr. Todd noted at the debate, there is a chance no candidate will end up with
1,991 pledged delegates before the convention.
What happens if no one gets a majority?
If no one gets 1,991 votes on the first ballot, then things could get more complicated.
This is the scenario people refer to when they use the phrase “contested convention” or
“brokered convention.”
In this situation, there would be a second ballot. And on the second ballot, there are
votes from two sets of delegates:
• Votes from the 3,979 pledged delegates, who are allowed to support a different
candidate on the second ballot if they so choose
• An additional 771 votes from “automatic delegates,” commonly known as superdelegates
To win the nomination, a candidate still must earn a majority of the votes on a given
ballot. In this case, that means she or he must amass more than 2,375 pledged and
automatic delegates. (In the second and subsequent rounds, a few automatic delegates
get only half votes; the D.N.C. says the magic number is 2,375.5, which this time is not
rounded up.)
It is theoretically possible that the nomination process would extend through multiple
ballots until one candidate hits the magic number (2,375.5) and prevails. One thing to
keep in mind is that delegates do not need to stay with the candidate to whom they were
originally allocated and can move around.
I
Mr. Sanders called for Hillary Clinton to be nominated after Vermont’s roll call vote at the 2016 Democratic National
Convention. Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Who are these superdelegates?
Basically, superdelegates are party insiders and V.I.P.s — and they can support
whomever they want.
Specifically, they include:
• Members of the Democratic National Committee itself
• Democratic members of Congress
• Democratic governors
• Distinguished party leaders, like former presidents, for instance
Superdelegates have never overridden the will of Democratic voters in a presidential
primary in the modern era, since 1972. But their role caused considerable consternation
during the 2016 primary between Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton; some of Mr.
Sanders’s supporters claimed that superdelegates were responsible for having “rigged”
the nomination system from within to benefit Mrs. Clinton.
In 2018, Democratic Party officials agreed to changes in the rules — which Sanders
backers pushed hard for — that effectively barred superdelegates from participating in
the first ballot.
Will there be a ‘contested’ or ‘brokered’
convention?
D.N.C. officials have long insisted that a contested convention, sometimes called a
brokered convention, is unlikely. Among their arguments:
• Media outlets speculate about the possibility of a contested convention every cycle, but it
seldom comes to pass and hasn’t happened in decades.
• In this cycle, only two states have voted so far; there are still many more results to come,
and voters may begin to coalesce around a single candidate who does in fact go on to
win the majority of pledged delegates.
• Even if no one gets to 1,991 delegates, delegates are not legally bound to vote for the
candidate to whom they have been allocated. As candidates lose momentum, some could
leave the race. Other campaigns could reach out behind the scenes, and a majority of
delegates could end up supporting a single candidate by the time the convention rolls
around.
That said, there is a chance things will remain unsettled by July. If that happens,
candidates could work to convince delegates to come into their camp at the convention
itself. Who wins in that chaotic situation is anybody’s guess.
And that explains why five of the six candidates on the debate stage this week did not
commit to simply handing the nomination to the candidate with the most delegates at
the end of the primary. They would rather roll the dice in a contested convention than
commit to declaring a winner based on a plurality.
This article also was published in the online edition of The New York Times with the title “How to
Win the Democratic Nomination, and Why it Could Get Complicated.”