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Poll: Democrats say majority of delegates should be needed for nomination

Talk of a contested convention creeps into nearly every presidential nominating cycle at some point, though it hasn’t happened in the modern primary era. But Tuesday’s slate of more than a dozen primaries — which, when all votes are accounted for, will have parceled out a third of all pledged delegates — initially did little to dispatch worries about the prospect of a contested convention.

With former Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York ending his bid Wednesday morning and Sen. Elizabeth Warren considering dropping out as well, the chances that neither Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden will reach 1,991 delegates has shrunk.

For now, though, POLITICO’s tracking of the delegate math shows a tight race between the two men, with Warren in a distant third heading into what is thought to be a friendlier stretch of calendar for Biden.

Despite the Democratic Party’s support for requiring its White House hopefuls to win a majority of delegates, it is largely unclear on what would occur in the event that no contender cleared that bar.

If no candidate clears the majority threshold on the first ballot during the Democratic National Convention, so-called superdelegates, who are typically DNC members and other elected officials, are free to vote for any Democratic candidate.

And this year because of a rule change by the DNC — in part at Sanders’ behest after an acrimonious 2016 primary — superdelegates may vote only on the second ballot and any subsequent ones until one candidate reaches a majority.

“Democrats lack a clear understanding of the superdelegate process in the primary race, but at the same time believe the unpledged delegates have too much control over who wins the nomination,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president. “Only a third of Democrats say they understand the role of superdelegates well. Among the same group, roughly four in 10 say superdelegates have too much power in selecting a nominee.”

While 27 percent say they don’t understand the role of superdelegates at all, after being provided with a brief overview of superdelegates’ role in the nominating process, Democratic voters were split in their evaluation of how much power is awarded to superdelegates: 39 percent say they hold too much power, with 31 saying superdelegates hold the right amount of sway.

A little over a quarter of Democrats, meanwhile, responded that they didn’t know or had no opinion on the amount of power afforded to superdelegates.

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll was conducted Feb. 28 and March 1 online among a national sample of 1,992 registered voters, including 759 Democratic primary voters. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines | Crosstabs

Source: politico.com
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