June 7, 2016 - Although Hillary Clinton won several state primaries, the
pledged delegate total still does not meet the 2383 requirement for nomination, and she will not have enough
pledged delegates to gain nomination on the first ballot at the National Convention.
Although Sanders was victorious on Tuesday in the Indiana primary, raising his
pledged delegate count to 1,409, Clinton had 1,699 after Tuesday's vote plus many more of the so-called super delegates, who are party officials free to vote for whomever they chose.
A third type of
pledged delegate is called an "Add-on" delegate, that allows for representation by party leaders and elected officials within the state.
It divides a state's number of 2004 Kerry voters (a rough measure of Democrats per state) by its number of
pledged delegates. The idea is that the fewer Kerry voters per
pledged delegate, the better represented state Democrats are at the convention.
And the consensus was that Hillary Clinton needed a stronger showing on May 6 to change the increasingly insurmountable-looking
pledged delegate math and/or the superdelegates who have been steadily migrating to Obama."
It's easy to imagine the howls of protest that would rise if the Wisconsin congressman went to Cleveland without a single
pledged delegate and without having won a single primary or caucus vote, then ran the convention in a way that ended with him as the nominee.
In 2016, for example, Clinton got almost 4 million more primary and caucus votes than Sanders, giving her a clear lead in
pledged delegates heading into the Philadelphia convention.
A group called Free the Delegates advocated to the Republican National Convention rules committee to allow
pledged delegates to "cast a vote of conscience" instead of being bound to vote for the candidate they are committed to through the state primaries or caucuses.