A contested convention could rattle the Democratic National Convention later this year, according to a prominent political statistician.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nave Silver and his team built two forecasting models for the 2020 Democratic primaries, and one of the options shows a contested convention, meaning that no candidate would have a clear lead going into the nominating event. In this model, no candidate has more than 50% of the delegates ahead of the nomination, and the convention would be used to decide the final candidate, who would not need to be someone already in the race.
Silver noted that the odds that no candidate has a majority when the convention takes place in July is “high and increasing” after candidates Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar all had strong showings in New Hampshire this week. Following the state’s primary and the Iowa caucuses last week, Buttigieg currently has one more delegate than Sanders despite the Vermont senator earning the most votes.
The model showed a 36% chance of a contested convention taking place, which is more than double Silver’s initial projections from data prior to Iowa.
While a contested convention could be the most exciting finale, the strongest forecast showed Sanders coming away from the primary elections victorious. Silver called Sanders the “most likely person” to win the nomination but noted that most of the polling data being used does not reflect the results from Tuesday’s election in New Hampshire.
He noted that Sanders took the lead from Joe Biden in several national polls and has the strongest fundraising numbers, though he’s been massively outspent by billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Silver gave Sanders a 38% chance of winning the nomination outright with a majority of delegates and a 52% chance of having a plurality of delegates going into the convention.
The pollster also acknowledged that the current models were probably underestimating Klobuchar. Not only did she overperform in New Hampshire, but she has also been treated kindly by the media, which is part of the forecasting model. Some Sanders supporters, on the other hand, have argued that their candidate has been treated unfairly by the press, including one supporter who criticized MSNBC on air for its “Bernie cynicism.”
If the convention is contested, the Democratic Nation Committee would oversee the nomination process as it is hashed out between delegates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, starting on July 13.
