Throughout the nominating process, which began on Feb. 3 with the Iowa caucuses, votes in primaries and caucuses are really votes to elect delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July. The goal for the candidates is to secure a majority of pledged delegates, and this cycle, the
Delegates are awarded at both the statewide and district – usually congressional – level. On the Democratic side, there are no winner-take-all primaries, meaning if a candidate wins a certain state, they don't just get all of the delegates up for grabs in that state. Instead, delegates are awarded proportionally based on the vote, but there's a key threshold all candidates must reach in order to be eligible to receive any delegates: 15%.
These delegates are also not bound to any candidate, and essentially have free reign to vote for whomever they want to. Some of these delegates are even candidates themselves, including the two front-runners this cycle, former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Currently, there are 771 automatic delegates, but this number could change.
If no one secures a majority of pledged delegates through the Democratic primary process, there could be a contested convention that would require multiple ballots to determine the nominee – something that has not happened since 1952. The rules on a second ballot and beyond are slightly different. If a nominee isn't secured on the first ballot at the convention,"superdelegates" then get to vote, and again on any subsequent ballot.
To reiterate: Pledged delegates are never legally bound to a candidate, but rather presumed to be loyal to the candidate they are elected to support at the convention.As noted already, pledged delegates are either allocated based on statewide results or based on district-level results -- and for the presidential drop outs' delegates, how they scored their pledged delegates matters.
"Those are not reallocated. They just become very popular," is how a DNC official described this scenario to ABC News.
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