Politics
Trump shows the delegates list for the Pennsylvania state primary.
- To decide their nominees for president, Democrats and Republicans use a system of delegates.
- The delegates are people represent their states at national party conventions. The candidate who gets the support of a majority of delegates becomes that party's presidential nominee.
- It's even more confounding than it sounds, and Democratic candidates must master a confusing morass of calendar conflicts and loyalties if they want to run against President Donald Trump in November.
- Trump himself is all but sure to become the Republican party presidential nominee in 2020, given his widespread support in his own party.
- Here's the breakdown of how the process works, state by state.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Winning a presidential nomination isn't as simple as winning the most votes.
Both Democrats and Republicans use a complicated delegate process to choose their nominees. Winning candidates must secure a majority of delegates - people who represent their state at national party conventions.
It's a confusing system, mixing delegates who are proportioned by Congressional districts and delegates who are allocated based on votes across the entire state.
Republicans and Democrats have different rules that determine how each party's delegates are chosen. President Donald Trump currently commands the support of 86% of GOP primary voters and several state party organizations have already canceled their primaries, so it's all but certain that he will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2020. But the Democrat who wants to compete with him in November but still navigate a mathematically complicated morass of elections and rack up delegates across the country before the convention in July.
The number of delegates varies from state to state. In the Democratic primaries, California has the most with 415 delegates, while New York has 274 and Texas has 228. On the other end of the spectrum, US territories like Guam and American Samoa, which do not vote in the general election, have six or seven each for the primary. They might not sound like much, but when the competition is close, they can be vital.
In addition to those "pledged" delegates, the Democratic primary also features "unpledged" delegates - or "superdelegates" - who are now mainly ornamental. These "superdelegates" vote for whichever candidate they want at the party convention in the unlikely instance that there isn't an agreed-upon nominee on the first ballot. While "superdelegates" were consequential in the 2016 race, the Democratic National Committee has since stripped them of much of their powers, and they mainly serve as a ticket to the Democratic National Convention for elected officials and DNC members.
The Democratic National Committee will decide on the final delegate allocation from each congressional district sometime early this year. But for the time being, these are the best estimates, from the Green Papers and documents provided by the DNC.
Here's how each Democratic state party decides its delegates and when their ballots close. The path begins in Iowa, which is a helpful example to show how the specific allocations break down.