The delegate primer
First, there are 3,979 pledged delegates awarded throughout the Democratic Primary season.
It takes 1,991 pledged delegates to win a majority and be nominated on the first ballot. Yes, that math doesn’t add up perfectly. Just roll with it. (Rules require the winner to win “a whole unit of delegate above half.” I got yr whole unit of delegate right here, mac. But yes, getting the Democratic nomination for President appears to have the same “win by two” rules that apply to ping-pong, tennis, and volleyball.)
Candidates win pledged delegates by winning votes in statewide primaries. Each state is allocated delegates depending on population and number of electors that will be assigned to them in the general election Electoral College. Those delegates are awarded to candidates in each respective state, based on how the candidate performs there. The only caveat: you have to hit a 15% threshold statewide to get any delegates. The exception to that rule: if a candidate gets 15% in a congressional district in a state, they get at least one delegate. And to make things more complicated: a state has to allocate all its delegates to candidates who hit that 15% threshold. And that can help and hurt candidates on the margins of the math.
For example: last Tuesday, Joe Biden beat Bernie Sanders by 13% in Oklahoma. Only Bernie and Joe got over the viability threshold in the state, but Bloomberg won two delegates from hitting 15% in congressional districts. In the end, Biden got 9 more delegates than Sanders in Oklahoma. In Utah, Sanders beat Biden by 17%. But because both Warren and Bloomberg cleared the 15% threshold there, both were awarded delegates, so Sanders emerged from Utah with just 8 more delegates than Biden – even though his margin there was greater than Biden’s margin in Oklahoma.
Notice through all this that this is PLEDGED delegates. What’s missing here?
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuperdelegates. That’s what.
After 2008 (when it was Superdelegates who defected from Clinton who helped Obama win the nomination with a plurality) and 2016 (when Supers lined up behind Clinton and mostly stayed there), the 2020 delegate math is no longer figured with superdelegates included. Nope. It was tough to win a majority before 2020 without superdelegates, but now it’s likely that someone will going forward. So, just in case: superdelegates MAY NOT vote on the first ballot. At all.
And then the DNC guidance to superdelegates goes on to encourage them to vote with their state delegation on any subsequent ballots.
In the now remote possibility that no one gets to 1,991 delegates on the first ballot, all delegates are released from their primary pledges. Most are likely to stick with their pledge, because they’re chosen based on candidate loyalty (as in, Team Biden picks Biden-loving delegates, Team Sanders will pick Sanders-loving delegates). Superdelegates may weigh in on subsequent ballots. But also: the number of delegates to win nomination now goes up to 2,375.5, too, instead of 1,991. The new party rules devised by the evil overlords at the DNC who are responsible for worldwide hunger and pandemics and everything else terrible essentially came up with a plan that pretty well neuters superdelegates going forward.
But it’s likely ALL OF THAT is moot. Because here’s the lay of the delegate landscape on March 9, 2020…
Depending on whom you follow for your delegate counts, when voters vote tomorrow, Joe Biden is likely to have a delegate lead of at least 75, and probably 85-90. (The fuzzy math there is because California is still counting, and there are some counting processes already awarding delegates to Warren and Bloomberg based on some of their performances in congressional districts.)
Now, trailing by 80 delegates (let’s use that as an average) may not seem too bad when both Biden and Sanders are still 1,400 or 1,500 votes away from achieving that 1,991 delegate majority. But…it’s a hill to climb, and maybe a cliff for Sanders. Based on demographics, we can imagine there’s a good chance that Biden wins by blowout margins in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Georgia in the next 30 days. And it’s just as important to realize that Florida and Georgia alone are worth a LOT of delegates.
And, without some sea change in the patterns of voting we’ve seen so far, states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even New York look pretty good for Biden. “Wait, triggercut,” you’re saying. “New York? No way! Bernie’s a fine son of Brooklyn. New York loves him!” And you’re right, they do! But New York is a closed primary. Which means that voters have until April 3rd to register to vote in New York to vote in the April 28th primary there, and when they register, they have to declare a party preference. ONLY Democrats may vote in the primary. And that may be a hindrance to pro-Sanders votes there.
So that’s the delegate situation in all its glory. Now lets talk about the 7 states doing primaries tomorrow.
