Well this escalated quickly. Now that President Biden has dropped out of the race, the Democratic National Convention will be quite the scene. But will it be a brokered convention? A contested convention? Or will it be an open convention? What about a combo?
Here’s what you need to know:
Brokered Convention: no candidate receives the required majority of delegates on the first ballot at the convention. Candidates try to “broker” a compromise in private after the first ballot.
Contested Convention: two or more candidates attempt to persuade delegates committed to someone else to come to their team before the first ballot. This is what Ted Cruz tried to do in 2016—get delegates committed to Donald Trump to ditch Trump and support him (spoiler: it didn’t work).
Open Convention: a convention where no delegates are committed to any candidate—because, like Biden, the presumptive nominee dropped out in this case—and are free to vote for whomever they choose. First candidate to a majority wins.
It’s possible the Dem. Convention in Chicago will be a open brokered convention: delegates can vote for whichever candidate they prefer, but no singular candidate receives the requisite majority. Boom.
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