Unpledged delegates , also called unbound delegates , are not bound by the results of state primaries or caucuses. Some state and territory party rules dictate that some or all of their Republican delegates are unbound. Former RNC committee member Curly Haugland and public policy consultant Sean Parnell argued in their book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate , that delegates are free to vote their conscience and are not bound by state or party laws to vote according to the results of party primaries or caucuses.
The national nominating convention is the formal ceremony during which the party officially selects its nominee. The delegates are individuals chosen to represent their state, territory, or Democrats Abroad at the convention. In , there were 4, delegates : 3, pledged delegates and automatic delegates —more commonly known as superdelegates.
To win the Democratic nomination, a presidential candidate needed to receive support from a majority of the pledged delegates on the first ballot: 1, pledged delegates. If the convention was contested and went to a second ballot or more, automatic delegates —commonly referred to as superdelegates—were able to vote and a candidate must have received majority support from all delegates—2, Previously, superdelegates were able to vote on the first ballot.
This rule changed after the presidential election , when the Unity Reform Commission proposed several ways to reduce the number and power of superdelegates. In response to the coronavirus pandemic , several states postponed their primaries. Under Rule 12 of the Delegate Selection Rules for the Democratic National Convention, no primary or caucus was permitted to take place after June 9, Any state violating that rule could have been subject to delegate reduction penalties.
This page provides an overview of the types of delegates to the convention and a summary of delegates by state. Election dates, delegate counts, and delegate allocation rules are subject to change as each state finalizes its delegation selection process. To see recent election and political coverage, view Ballotpedia's homepage. Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers.
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Presidential election changes in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders. The supposed logic for beginning the nomination fight in four small states Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina is that this jerry-built system allows voters to winnow the field.
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar — stayed in the race until after the South Carolina primary. When the Iowa caucus choices were finally tabulated, Biden ran an embarrassing fourth, with initial support from only 15 percent of Iowa Democrats. In , after an analogous fourth-place Iowa finish, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri dropped out of the race. But was a different story. Biden moved on to New Hampshire, where he finished a woeful fifth.
The former vice president then stumbled into Nevada, where Sanders beat him by roughly a two-to-one margin in the caucuses. So, after that roller-coaster ride, what are the lessons for the future from the early delegate contests?
The ineptitude of the Iowa Democrats destroyed the last shreds of a justification for selecting delegates in a caucus rather than a primary. Political parties — which run caucuses independent of state election officials — simply do not have the skills to reliably count ballots in a contested race. Iowa Republicans demonstrated this failing in when they initially declared former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ultimate nominee the winner before reversing field two weeks later and awarding the crown to former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
And back in the caucuses , Iowa Democrats deferred to network projections and stopped counting with roughly precincts untallied.
More important, caucuses are inequitable because they are invariably low-turnout events. Traditionally, Iowans in both parties had to meet in person on a Monday evening in the depth of winter to participate in the caucuses.
While the rules were always looser in Nevada, the caucuses did require showing up in person. In the Democrats, to their credit, tried to make it easier for voters in Iowa and Nevada to caucus.
Iowa held virtual online caucuses in some group settings for Democrats who worked nights, temporarily resided out of state, or lived in group homes for the elderly. Nevada made provisions for early voting.
But neither of these attempted reforms did much to increase turnout. In about 70 percent of the New Hampshire voters who would ultimately back Biden in November cast ballots in the Democratic primary. The South Carolina primary attracted roughly half of the eventual general-election Biden voters. In contrast, despite the national attention lavished on Iowa, only about , Democrats participated in the opening-gun caucuses, which was less than one-fourth of the votes the Democratic ticket would receive from Iowa voters nine months later.
Caucuses were already an endangered species for the Democrats in , with only two other states North Dakota and Wyoming holding them. But even if the holdout states switched to primaries, there would still be the question of which states get to go first.
Over the years, both parties have protected a small group of early states — most recently Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina — from encroachment by other states jumping the gun. In Michigan and Florida violated Democratic Party rules by moving their primaries into the protected zone for early states. From time to time, proposals have been floated to replace the individual state delegate contests with a national primary or a series of regional primaries.
A national primary, or even a sequence of regional ones, would require something close to nine-digit spending on TV advertising for a little-known candidate to compete. Under this kind of system, there would be almost no way for a long-shot candidate aside from self-funders to break through based on personal campaigning and affordable TV ads in one or two early states.
But centering early campaigning on a handful of small states has allowed underdog candidates like Arizona Sen. John McCain in and Bernie Sanders in to emerge as serious alternatives to the high-flying front-runners. While his presidential race is mostly forgotten, he came surprisingly close to knocking off Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination.
There is an inherent logic to starting the presidential race with primaries not caucuses in four smaller states in different regions of the country. The necessity of personal campaigning undoubtedly helps the candidates understand the sprawling nation they are hoping to govern. And, frankly, the essence of democracy lies in a candidate like Joe Biden spending 90 minutes speaking to and patiently answering questions from Iowa Democrats in a high school cafeteria in Knoxville population: 7, just 14 months before he was inaugurated as president.
The conundrum, of course, is which four smaller states go first? Because by ordering the primaries, all states are equal, but some states are more equal than others. The first two Democratic delegate contests in were rightly criticized for their lack of diversity; Iowa and New Hampshire are among the 10 states with a white population of more than 90 percent. In contrast, 56 percent of South Carolina Democratic primary voters were Black, according to exit polls. And despite their comparatively low turnout, the Nevada caucuses were reasonably diverse, with 17 percent of the participating Democrats Hispanic and another 11 percent Black, again according to exit polls.
Making South Carolina the second primary would enhance diversity, especially since candidates traditionally campaign by hopscotching back and forth between the first two states on the calendar. New Hampshire boasted a quirky independent streak that embraced outsider candidates ranging from Pat Buchanan to John McCain. South Carolina, in contrast, was the state where the GOP establishment regrouped, which is why its primary was pivotal in securing the nomination for Bob Dole in and George W.
Bush in There are also real-world considerations buttressing the special roles of New Hampshire and South Carolina. The uninspiring track records of the Iowa and Nevada caucuses offer a compelling argument to award the third and fourth positions on the calendar to new states.
As a substitute for Iowa, Kansas offers similar rural demographics and an agricultural pedigree. Kansas, in fact, aside from its overwhelmingly white population, is surprisingly close to providing a cross section of the nation in terms of median age, income, and education.
Another appealing notion might be to replace Iowa with Wisconsin, a good proxy for the industrial Midwest. With no party registration in Wisconsin, an early presidential primary would allow both parties to test the appeal of its candidates to independent voters in one of the great 21st-century battleground states.
But while Nevada has one of the highest percentages of Hispanic voters in the country, the dominance of Las Vegas and casinos makes the state atypical. As a regional alternative, award the final spot on the early calendar to Arizona a swing state like Nevada , Colorado, or New Mexico. But even if the order of the primaries were New Hampshire, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Arizona, it would not solve all the problems with the primary calendar.
Minutes after the South Carolina primary polls closed at 7 p. The race for the Democratic nomination had been upended in 48 hours in one of the biggest turnabouts in modern political history. And then on March 3 — aka Super Tuesday — 14 states, including California and Texas, held presidential primaries. A staggering Even though they had already dropped out, Buttigieg and Klobuchar received almost , votes combined, with most of them presumably coming from absentee and early balloting.
Deliberation should be an integral part of democracy. Primaries, in particular, should offer voters time to reflect on their choices, since the differences among candidates in the same party tend to be nuanced.
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