When California decided to move up its primary to Super Tuesday, it did so with the hope that it would play a bigger role in the Democratic nomination process. Now, the prospect of a chaotic contested convention this July could hinge on that decision.
As both the most populous state and one of the deepest blue ones, California has by far the largest number of delegates to send to the national convention in Milwaukee. Of its 494 total delegates, 415 are up for grabs based on results on Tuesday — that’s more than one-fifth of the 1,991 delegates needed for a candidate to win the nomination. To put it another way, the California primary will award more than 17 times the number of delegates than New Hampshire did.
California has typically either held its primary later, when its large delegate haul became gravy on top for the candidate with an insurmountable lead (such as 2016), or at a point at which the field had been narrowed down to two candidates (as was the case when it fell in Super Tuesday in 2008).
But this time around, California Democrats will be weighing-in not just early but at a point when the contest is truly unsettled, with support divided between more than two candidates.
Though the prospect of a contested convention has long been a fantasy of political junkies that hasn’t come into fruition in the modern primary system, several factors in 2020 have made it more likely that the primaries will end without any candidate having achieved a majority of delegates.
One is the heavy concentration of primaries relatively early in the contest (about a third of delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday alone). Another is the historically large field of candidates. Also, unlike the Republican side, in which there are a number of contests in which the winner takes all or most delegates, Democrats allocate delegates on a proportional basis, with candidates who can get 15% at either the state or congressional district level splitting them.
In past years, hundreds of superdelegates (or Democratic officeholders and party officials) had the ability to help put whoever they wanted over the top. But this time around, if nobody obtains a majority, the superdelegates would have to wait until the second convention ballot to weigh in. That means if no candidate gets a majority of delegates after all primary votes are counted, and multiple candidates decide to stake their claim to the nomination, there will be a chaotic convention.
Due to its size, timing, and allocation rules, California will play a huge role in this. What’s especially significant is that two-thirds of its delegates are awarded based on performance in each of the state’s 53 congressional districts, creating mini-primaries within the state primary. What that means is that even if candidates fall short of the state delegate threshold, if the support isn’t evenly distributed, they could exceed 15% in some of the congressional districts, absorbing delegates that would make it harder for the winner of California to come away with a delegate majority in the state. A perfect example of this is Pete Buttigieg, who does significantly better in areas with a higher concentration of white voters than in areas where there’s a large minority population.
Handicapping the California delegate chase is extremely difficult. With California coming just three days after South Carolina’s primary, there won’t be enough time to assess how those results will have affected the momentum of the race. And to the extent there is polling, it’s done at the state level, which leaves a lot of guesswork as to how it would translate in various congressional districts.
Further complicating matters is California’s extensive system of mail and early voting. The state began accepting mail ballots before the results of the Iowa caucuses were known, and 1.3 million of them had been returned before the Nevada caucuses. The final number is likely to be much higher. For perspective, 8.5 million voted in the 2016 California primary. This complicates matters because it means a substantial number of Californians voted at different times based on different information.
As best as we can tell, Bernie Sanders has opened up a solid lead in California polling statewide. But with Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, and Buttigieg are all within striking distance of meeting the 15% threshold, it’s difficult to predict how that will translate into delegates. If all of them but Sanders drop below 15%, that means that Sanders would get all 144 of the statewide delegates and likely a majority of overall delegates in the state. If, however, multiple candidates end up above 15%, Sanders could still win big in California without putting much distance between himself and the field.
Depending on which way it goes and what happens elsewhere, California could have a dramatic impact on the convention. If Sanders ends up with a majority of delegates in California, it improves his chances of getting a majority of delegates and avoiding a contested convention should he perform well in other states. But a big Sanders haul in California would also make it difficult for Biden to gain a majority of delegates should he end up making a comeback. A heavily fractured result, with three or four candidates claiming delegates in the state, would make it much harder to avoid a contested convention.
And don’t even count on a resolution Tuesday. California will accept all ballots that are returned by Friday, as long as they are postmarked by Tuesday. That means if the results are close enough statewide or in a critical number of congressional districts, it could be a while before we know what happened.
