It’s a scenario straight out of “The West Wing” or a Hollywood political thriller: a contested convention, with factions fighting it out through rounds of balloting late into the night to ensure their favored candidate secures the party’s nomination.
The stuff of fantasy until now — the last convention to go more than one ballot to decide a nominee was the Democrats’ in 1952 — the prospect can’t be written off, says Rep. Brendan Boyle. With almost 20 Democrats vying for the right to challenge President Trump and a maze of delegate-allocation rules, a contested convention this summer in Milwaukee, Wis., is possible, if still unlikely, according to the Pennsylvania Democrat first elected to the House in 2014.
Boyle, whose 2nd Congressional District includes all of Northeast Philadelphia and parts of North Philadelphia, said the “nerd” in him thinks there’s a “plausible chance” no Democrat in the White House race will have earned majority support by the time the Democratic National Convention convenes near the shores of Lake Michigan during July 2020.
While predicting the likelihood was less than 50%, Boyle said the possibility was greater than the “prevailing opinion” because political experts and armchair pundits have been “lulled into believing that it can’t happen.” Instead, he argued commentators were “pulling from a small sample size” of Democratic primary battles since the party changed its rules ahead of the 1972 election to make the system more inclusive of women and minorities, rather than relying on old-time party bosses to choose a nominee.
Not only are there a record number of candidates in 2020, but convoluted delegate-selection rules in many Democratic primary and caucus states can draw out the process of producing a nominee.
“Many people are speaking like there is very little chance of an open convention, but they aren’t factoring in the historically large size of the field and given our unique delegate rules, not one single candidate may have captured more than 50 percent,” Boyle said of the party’s convention rules, governed by the proportional allocation of delegates as opposed to a winner-takes-all framework.
Boyle, 42, a member of the Budget and Ways and Means committees, added he was approaching the hypothetical with “an even-keeled” attitude, neither “wishing for it” nor anticipating it with “a sense of dread.”
“Clearly, there would be a delay in the unification process, but there could turn out to be advantages,” he said. “The TV ratings for a genuinely brokered, open convention would be astronomically high. It would be incredibly exciting, and grab the attention of casual voters not actively paying attention to the primaries. The victor would get a tremendous boost from it.”
Political scientists who spoke to the Washington Examiner, though, suggested a contested convention isn’t an inevitability. Those in second and third place will feel tremendous pressure to unify around the front-runner and avoid fracturing the party.
“The last convention to go more than one ballot was the Democrats in 1952, which went three ballots,” said Robert Spitzer, State University of New York Cortland’s political science department chairman. “The process is sharply winnowing by its nature where money, media attention, and momentum rapidly gravitate to the top two to three candidates. This process applies to the Republican nomination process as well. And the Democrats have one other powerful uniting force that will push them to a one ballot choice they never had before: Donald Trump.”
Although Virginia Tech political science assistant professor Caitlin Jewitt agreed party bigwigs can have some influence in forcing also-rans to drop out, it only goes so far. A crowded field could have unintended consequences, she said.
“Even if winner-take-all rules were in place, two equally strong candidates could compete (winning different states) and it could result in neither candidate winning a majority,” she wrote in an email. “But the more candidates there are, the more difficult it is for any candidate to secure a majority of delegates (regardless if proportional representation or winner-take-all is used). It also becomes harder for the party elites to coalesce around one candidate, providing voters with a clear signal — we saw this in 2016 on the Republican side, as Republican elites failed to come together to support a more traditional Republican (like [former Florida Gov. Jeb] Bush or [then-Ohio Gov. John] Kasich).”
However the delegate fight goes down, it will be fun to watch, Boyle said.
“I love campaigns, and every election I learn something new,” he said, referring to the 2008 Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as the brutal Republican contest in 2016. “I think 2020 will carry on that tradition with an open, fascinating race.”
