It seems to me that it’s unlikely any of the candidates will have a majority of delegates by the time the primaries are over. None the less, the google search hits on this topic come up with very few results, about half of which seem to be from last year and several others from back in spring and early summer from this year. I also note little discussion about this possibility in the Democratic primary thread. All this makes me think that I’m conjuring up an unlikely possibility that many other serious thinkers are not really considering.
Here are my thoughts on this topic. The primaries are all proportional rather than winner take all. I doubt that Biden, Warren, Sanders, or Buttigieg will drop out before Super Tuesday. At this point my guess is there will probably be something like 7-10 candidates still running going into Super Tuesday. There is likely to be three and four way splits in many of the Super Tuesday states. By 3/17 almost all the large states and over half of the states overall will have voted. Unless it comes down to two candidates before that date, it seems unlikely that the remaining states will have enough delegates to decide the matter. The remaining large states are Georgia on 3/24, New York and Pennsylvania on 4/28, and New Jersey in June. In other words, if the field doesn’t shrink down to two or three by Super Tuesday, it seems that no one will likely be able to win a majority. If that happens then we will again be dealing with the dreaded super delegates that Sanders criticized last time. I assume they would break in favor of Biden, but that’s just a guess.
How do you all think such a scenario would play out, and more importantly is this scenario even likely or am I worried about a low probability event?
Part of my point is that it isn’t being beaten to death this cycle even though it seems more likely to happen this year compared to others. I haven’t seen it discussed in 538 or Politico. A google search returns only a few articles with idle speculation from last year or several moths ago at the most recent.
Oh, it will. Just wait for the voting to begin. Right now we are still in the white knight savior phase, which Bloomberg and Patrick actually believed.
There’s no possible way to know this until the voting starts. But even if it happens, the solution is not to add a bunch more random people half-way through the process.
The actual solution would be for the DNC to drastically raise their debate requirements and cut the candidates down to, say, half a dozen? With a top 3 candidates only for the last pre-voting debate.
Of course, that means Bernie and Warren would be tag-teaming Biden and the DNC is desperate to prevent that. So it’s not going to happen. But that’s how you’d do it, if you were genuinely worried about diluting the vote.
The stupid DNC conspiracy theories are why the debate field isn’t narrowing fast enough. They had to bend over backwards to appease the Bernie Bros who are still crying, ‘Rigged!’ over 2016.
Thankfully, a lot of these third tier candidates are going to start dropping. Fundraising really clams up from the Thanksgiving to New Years time frame and some of the campaigns are going to wake up like Beto’s and realize they don’t habe the money to continue even one more day.
I think the only solution the DNC could provide is to limit the superdelegates to the 3rd or 4th round of voting. In the case of a deadlock that would allow some horse trading between the candidates before the superdelegates become involved. The best solution would be for the voters to settle on one “leftist lane” candidate and one “moderate lane” candidate before Super Tuesday.
And I’m still not sure why it’s a problem that it was rigged. Of course the DNC should have some say into who their candidate will be. I would have preferred if they had chosen Sanders, but it was their choice to make.
Pretending that a political party should be nonpartisan is absurd.
Unless Bloomberg’s candidacy changes things, there are really only three viable candidates. Biden, Warren and Sanders. All of the candiates have their supporters who will answer polls that indicate their support, but once it comes to casting you single vote, most voters will want to put their vote on someone who actually has a shot at winning, and even getting a single delegate requires getting at least 15% of the vote in a district. So I expect there will be only a handful of delegates outside of these three. At some point in the primary it will become clear that either Sanders or Warren is the preferred candidate of the hard left, at which point the other will see their support dry up. Then it becomes a two person race which one side or the other will win.
In spite of all the conspiracy theories about super-delegates, all of them realize that overturning the will of the primary voters will be mortal blow to the party. So unless the winning candidate is at a Trump level of unacceptability, they will in the end endorse whoever gets the most non-super delegates.
The Democratic Party holds primaries for Democratic Party members. But Sen. Sanders wasn’t a Democrat until a few months ago. In 2016 he was an independent who crashed the (D) primaries - and more registered Democrats voted for Sec. Clinton, who had been (D) for a long, long time.
Compare with Ms Stein of the Green Party. Was she excluded from “rigged” Democratic Party primaries? Was Sanders excluded from (G) primary ballots? Was Tramp, also not (D), excluded from “rigged” (D) primaries? Really? Why should any non-member expect a party to accommodate them?
Enough tangent. Assuming 2020 party conventions aren’t cancelled by an intervening emergency or disaster, sure the (D) show could be a fight. We still have no idea who will politically survive that long, nor who could rise from political death. Sen. Clinton floats another run. Would that be tragic?
As a Democrat, the one not-completely-horrible factor in this unlikely scenario is that the Democratic convention next year is unusually early (mid-July). So there would be more time than normal for the party to come together after the bitterness of a truly contested convention, and for the nominee to pivot to the center. For this reason, it’s not definite that Trump wins in this scenario. Still, continuing the circular firing squad thing into next summer would be favorable for the GOP.
‘Nonpartisan’ is not taking sides in interparty disagreements. I expect the DNC to be partisan; I just wish it would do a better job of it.
But if the DNC overrules its own voters in choosing its nominee, it can’t expect a lot of enthusiasm from those voters.
I’m not saying this happened in 2016; in fact, I’m positive that it didn’t. But it would be bad for the party if it started doing that. Its blackballing of consultants and so forth who go to work for primary challengers is already a step too far in that direction.
The Summer Olympics start a bit earlier than normal on July 24. The Democrats, as the party out of power, go first so they want to hold their convention before the Olympics.
The Republicans have their convention during peak vacation time in late August after the Olympics are over.
Don’t forget about the 15% rule. I have a feeling that, if somebody gets something like 20% of the vote in a large state but ends up with 60% of the delegates because of it, we’ll be hearing a lot about it.
The surest possible way I know of to get Trump re-elected is to have a progressive with a sizable delegate lead after the first ballot, but have the Superdelegates push a moderate over the top on the second ballot. I think the DNC knows this, and will try to “persuade” the Superdelegates to vote for the first ballot leader. (Quick check of the convention rules: the way I read it, a Superdelegate can vote for anyone (Call for the 2020 Convention, Rule IX.F.3.a: “On all votes, except the first ballot of the presidential roll call as described in Article IX.C.7, automatic delegates retain their ability to vote according to their own preferences.”).)
I’m simply baffled by how many times you’ve had to be told that the DNCs own rules prohibit favoritism amongst Dem candidates.
Anyway, to the OP, That Don Guy has the big point you are missing. All these people polling at under 10% aren’t getting any delegates. The delegates are going to be split amongst the top two or three candidates and a majority can easily start to emerge.