Bit long but explainer from the guardian (June 2024)
Have Democrats already officially named Biden as their nominee?
No. Democrats will convene in Chicago from 19 to 22 August to formally select their presidential nominee, so Biden is still considered the presumptive nominee at this stage. The Democratic national committee plans to virtually nominate Biden before the convention to meet an Ohio ballot deadline of 7 August, but no date has been officially announced for that vote.
However, Biden has amassed 3,894 pledged delegates through his victories in state primaries, so he already has more than enough delegates to secure the nomination.
What will happen to Biden’s pledged delegates if he withdraws from the presidential race?
If Biden drops out of the race, his pledged delegates would arrive in Chicago uncommitted to any specific candidate, which would likely kick off a frenzied fight to win their support.
“Candidates who step into the breach hoping to take the place of the fallen candidate will find out who these delegates are and woo them in as many ways as they can. The outcome will be a convention where the result may not be known ahead of time,” Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic national committee rules committee and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in January.
Democrats have not seen a floor fight for the presidential nomination since 1968, when their convention was coincidentally (and infamously) held in Chicago. In a potentially eerie parallel to 2024, then president Lyndon Johnson decided against seeking re-election just months before the election. The assassination of Robert F Kennedy left Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, as the main opponent against Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam war candidate.
The fraught nominating process was overshadowed by the violence on Chicago’s streets, as tens of thousands of police officers and national guard officers confronted anti-war protesters. In the end, Humphrey won the nomination – even though he had never appeared on a state primary ballot – but he went on to lose to Richard Nixon in the general election.
Would Kamala Harris automatically win all of Biden’s delegates if he dropped out?
No. Because the delegates would be uncommitted if Biden withdraws, they could theoretically vote on the floor for any candidate. In the days since the debate, a number of names – including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer – have been floated as possible replacements for Biden.
But Harris would probably go to the convention as a strong favorite for the nomination. As the vice-president, she has the largest national profile of any potential candidate, and Biden’s pledged delegates are mostly party loyalists who would be looking for the safest possible choice if he stepped aside.
How would a nominee be chosen on the floor?
On the first ballot, a winning nominee would need to secure the votes of a majority of Democrats’ roughly 4,000 pledged delegates. If no candidate won a majority on the first ballot, Democrats would continue on to a second ballot, in which so-called “superdelegates” would have an opportunity to vote.
Superdelegates are mostly senior Democratic party leaders, and they would go to the convention not pledged to any candidate. With the roughly 700 superdelegates added to the voting pool, the winning candidate would then need to secure about 2,300 delegates to capture the nomination.
Although superdelegates would make up a relatively small share of the delegate pool, they could play an important role in choosing the nominee. Their support for a particular candidate would speak volumes and could sway fellow delegates.