Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race on Sunday, after the fallout of his damaging debate performance in late June, in which he repeatedly tripped over his own words and failed to rebut Donald Trump’s many false claims.
Some commentators had called for replacing Biden as the nominee even before the debate, largely citing the president’s age as a potentially decisive vulnerability in the election. (Biden is 81, and Trump is 78.)
But the groundswell, in both public opinion and in Democratic party leadership, grew in July until Biden decided to end his bid and he has now endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris.
With all of the presidential primaries over, the process for replacing Biden could be complicated and politically volatile. Biden had already won far more delegates than he needed to secure the nomination, and the Democratic national convention, which will bring a formal end to the primary process, is next month.
Here’s everything you need to know about the process for replacing Biden:
Have Democrats already officially named Biden as their nominee?
No. Democrats will convene in Chicago from 19 to 22 August to formally select their presidential nominee, so until now Biden was still considered the presumptive nominee at this stage. The Democratic national committee had plans to virtually nominate Biden via an electronic roll call before the convention. New plans have not yet been released.
What happens to Biden’s pledged delegates now that he has withdrawn from the presidential race?
Biden’s pledged delegates will probably arrive in Chicago uncommitted to any specific candidate, which could kick off a frenzied fight to win their support. Senior Democrats, such as the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, had called for an open nomination process, which would allow several candidates to vie for the nomination, in the event of Biden dropping out.
“Candidates who step into the breach hoping to take the place of the fallen candidate will find out who these delegates are and woo them in as many ways as they can. The outcome will be a convention where the result may not be known ahead of time,” Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic National Committee rules committee and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in January.
Democrats have not seen a floor fight for the presidential nomination since 1968, when their convention was coincidentally (and infamously) held in Chicago. In a potentially eerie parallel to 2024, then president Lyndon Johnson decided against seeking re-election just months before the election. The assassination of Robert F Kennedy left Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, as the main opponent against Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam war candidate.
The fraught nominating process was overshadowed by the violence on Chicago’s streets, as tens of thousands of police officers and national guard officers confronted anti-war protesters. In the end, Humphrey won the nomination – even though he had never appeared on a state primary ballot – but he went on to lose to Richard Nixon in the general election.
Does Kamala Harris automatically win all of Biden’s delegates due to his endorsement?
No. The delegates will now be uncommitted and could theoretically vote on the floor for any candidate. Biden has already endorsed Harris, but in the days since the debate, a number of names – including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer – have been floated as possible replacements for Biden.
Harris will still probably go to the convention as a strong favorite for the nomination. As the vice-president, she has the largest national profile of any potential candidate, and Biden’s pledged delegates are mostly party loyalists who would be looking for the safest possible choice if he stepped aside.
How would a nominee be chosen on the floor?
On the first ballot, a winning nominee would need to secure the votes of a majority of Democrats’ roughly 4,000 pledged delegates. If no candidate won a majority on the first ballot, Democrats would continue on to a second ballot, in which so-called “superdelegates” would have an opportunity to vote.
Superdelegates are mostly senior Democratic party leaders, and they would go to the convention not pledged to any candidate. With the roughly 700 superdelegates added to the voting pool, the winning candidate would then need to secure about 2,300 delegates to capture the nomination.
Although superdelegates would make up a relatively small share of the delegate pool, they could play an important role in choosing the nominee. Their support for a particular candidate would speak volumes and could sway fellow delegates.
Read more about Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 election:
