What’s A Brokered Convention? Chances Are Getting Higher That Democrats Will Find Out In Milwaukee

The chances of a brokered Democratic convention are rising as Super Tuesday approaches, and most of the Democratic candidates have the means and motivation to continue.

A prediction model by FiveThirtyEight found that the odds of no one candidate winning more than half of pledged delegates is 38%.

Then “superdelegates” — party elders who lost their first-round voting power after the 2016 election wake of the 2016 primary battle — would be able to vote for their candidate of choice. Additional revotes would be necessary, and pledged delegates would be able to change their vote.

Democratic National Convention rules state that “a majority vote of the Convention’s delegates shall be required to nominate the presidential candidate” and “balloting will continue until a nominee is selected.”

The last time either the Democratic or Republican nominating conventions went past a first-ballot was 1952, when Adlai Stevenson won the Democratic nomination on the third ballot.

Karl Rove, the former White House senior adviser to President George W. Bush, told Fox News Thursday that no candidate has a strong lead delegate-wise.

“Delegates chosen… through March 3rd are going to represent 40 percent of the total at the Democratic convention. And after March 3, we’re gonna be 60 percent. Right now, we got everybody sort of tight,” Rove said on Fox’s Hannity. “Nobody’s breaking it… Buttigieg and Bernie are about 32 percent of the delegates selected so far.”

“They need to win 60 percent of those to get 36 percent of the total delegates and get themselves to 50… as of the opening day in Milwaukee,” Rove continued. “That looks like it’s going to be awfully hard to do given how scrambled this field is.”

The Democratic convention will be held in July in Milwaukee, and currently eight candidates are still in the running.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow a brokered convention would allow for delegates to pick the best candidate.

“I just know I strongly support whoever comes out of the convention,” Klobuchar said. “I think that is what we’ve all agreed to do.”

She said if the convention ends up brokered she assumes “it’s going to be a small number of people,” but added “that’s what conventions are about.”

“We have to get the best candidate, I’m not certain what’s going to happen,” Klobuchar said. “All I know is that I’m devoted to supporting whoever the candidate is. I just think it should be me.”