Under this rule, a candidate must have the support of a majority of the delegates of at least eight states in order to get the nomination.
A candidate for the Democratic nomination must win a majority of combined delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. Pledged delegates are elected or chosen at the state or local level, with the understanding that they will support a particular candidate at the convention.
Once the first ballot, or vote, has occurred, and no candidate has a majority of the delegates' votes, the convention is then considered brokered; thereafter, the nomination is decided through a process of alternating political horse trading — delegate vote trading — and additional re-votes.
After the primaries and caucuses, each major party, Democrat and Republican, holds a national convention to select a Presidential nominee. The party's Presidential nominee announces his or her choice for Vice President.
The formal purpose of such a convention is to select the party's nominee for President, as well as to adopt a statement of party principles and goals known as the platform and adopt the rules for the party's activities, including the presidential nominating process for the next election cycle.
The primary goal of the Democratic National Convention is to nominate and confirm a candidate for president and vice president, adopt a comprehensive party platform and unify the party.
February 3 to June 23, 2020
| Candidate | Joe Biden | Bernie Sanders (suspended) |
| Home state | Delaware | Vermont |
| Estimated delegate count | 1,217 | 914 |
| Contests won | 19 | 9 |
| Popular vote | 10,134,669 | 7,719,464 |
The delegates to the national convention will vote, by ballot, to select the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2020 election, where the majority will be bound by the results of their respective state contests on the first ballot.
Currently, as in most states, California's votes in the electoral college are distributed in a winner-take-all manner; whichever presidential candidate wins the state's popular vote wins all 55 of the state's electoral votes.
At least in name, superdelegates are not involved in the Republican Party nomination process. There are delegates to the Republican National Convention who are seated automatically, but they are limited to three per state, consisting of the state chairman and two district-level committee members.
The party's presidential nominee is chosen primarily by pledged delegates, which are in turn selected through a series of individual state caucuses and primary elections. Add-on or PLEO pledged delegates, which allow for representation by party leaders and elected officials within the state.
Super Tuesday is the United States presidential primary election day in February or March when the greatest number of U.S. states hold primary elections and caucuses. The phrase Super Tuesday has been used to refer to presidential primary elections since at least 1976.
2020 California Democratic primary
| March 3, 2020 |
| ← AR CO → |
| 494 Democratic National Convention delegates (415 pledged, 79 unpledged) The number of pledged delegates won is determined by the popular vote |
|---|
| Reporting | 99% as of March 20, 7:53 pm PDT |
Statewide results
| Party | Candidate | % |
|---|
| Democratic | Hillary Clinton | 61.73% |
| Republican | Donald Trump | 31.62% |
| Libertarian | Gary Johnson | 3.37% |
| Green | Jill Stein | 1.96% |
In the United States, a contingent election is the procedure used in presidential elections in the case where no candidate wins an absolute majority of votes in the Electoral College, the constitutional mechanism for electing the president and the vice president of the United States.
Results of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries
| Candidate | Hillary Clinton | Bernie Sanders |
| Home state | New York | Vermont |
| Delegate count | 2,842 | 1,865 |
| Contests won | 34 | 23 |
| Popular vote | 16,914,722 | 13,206,428 |
Democratic superdelegates are free to support any candidate for the presidential nomination. This contrasts with pledged delegates who are selected based on the party primaries and caucuses in each U.S. state, in which voters choose among candidates for the party's presidential nomination.
In United States politics, a brokered convention (sometimes referred to as an open convention and closely related to a contested convention) can occur during a presidential election when a political party fails to choose a nominee on the first round of delegate voting at the party's nominating convention.
List
| Delegate | State | Date |
|---|
| Nanette Barragán | California | January 29, 2019 |
| Bob Menendez | New Jersey | February 1, 2019 |
| Phil Murphy | New Jersey | February 1, 2019 |
| Clay N. Middleton | South Carolina | February 4, 2019 |
2020 election
Under these new rules, superdelegates cannot vote on the first presidential nominating ballot, unless a candidate via the outcome of primaries and caucuses already has gained enough votes (more than 50% of all delegate votes) among only the elected pledged delegates.The 2016 United States presidential election in California of November 8, 2016, was won by Democrat Hillary Clinton with a 61.7 percent majority of the popular vote over Republican Donald Trump. California's 55 electoral votes were assigned to Clinton.
This list tracks the presumed support (based on endorsements) for given candidates among the 775 unpledged delegates (commonly known as superdelegates, and referred to in the 2020 election cycle as 'automatic delegates') who will be eligible to cast a vote at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which is to be held
Currently, there are 538 electors; based on 435 representatives, 100 senators from the fifty states and three electors from Washington, D.C. The six states with the most electors are California (55), Texas (38), New York (29), Florida (29), Illinois (20), and Pennsylvania (20).
List
| Delegate | State | Endorsement |
|---|
| Andrew Cuomo | New York | Biden |
| Dianne Feinstein | California | Biden |
| Tom Carper | Delaware | Biden |
| Tulsi Gabbard | Hawaii | Gabbard |
Texas was won by Republican Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence by a 9% margin over Democrats Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.
The annual salary for delegates is $17,640 per year. Each delegate represents roughly 84,702 people. Candidates for office must be at least 21 years of age at the time of the election, residents of the districts they seek to represent, and qualified to vote for General Assembly legislators.
In this circumstance, all regular delegates (who may have been pledged to a particular candidate according to rules which vary from state to state) are "released" and are able to switch their allegiance to a different candidate before the next round of balloting.
Pledged delegates can change their vote if no candidate is elected on the first ballot and can even vote for a different candidate on the first ballot if they are "released" by the candidate they are pledged to. Automatic delegates, on the other hand, can change their vote purely of their own volition.
The annual salary for delegates is $17,640 per year. Each delegate represents roughly 84,702 people.
Texas caucuses. The Texas Democratic Party no longer selects state delegates at caucuses. After the votes of Texans participating in the Democratic primary are counted, delegates are awarded among the candidates who received 15 percent or more of the vote, in proportion to the votes received by each.
If a winning Presidential candidate dies or becomes incapacitated between the counting of electoral votes in the Congress and the inauguration, the Vice President elect will become President, according to Section 3 of the 20th Amendment.
