Bernie Sanders Says He Will Drop Out if Biden Gets Plurality Coming Into Dem Convention
By Aila Slisco On 3/4/20 at 10:59 PM EST
Senator Bernie Sanders vowed to drop out of the presidential race if former Vice President Joe Biden ends up with a plurality of pledged delegates heading into the Democratic convention in July.
Sanders made the remarks during an appearance on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday night. The senator stayed in the race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite having fewer delegates but said that a rules change after that election cycle makes the situation different this time. If he is left with fewer delegates than Biden at the end of this primary season, he plans to bow out of the race, insisting that using superdelegates to decide the nomination would be a mistake.
"If Biden walks into the convention, or at the end of the process, [and] has more votes than me, he's the winner," said Sanders, before confirming he would concede whether the lead was a majority or a plurality.
At the end of the 2016 primaries, Democratic convention rules allowed superdelegates to vote on the first ballot, which is no longer the case in 2020. Instead, a candidate who has a majority of at least 1,991 delegates would automatically win on the first ballot. However, if a candidate only had a plurality of votes, a second ballot could potentially be decided by superdelegates.
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https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-will-drop-out-if-biden-gets-plurality-coming-dem-convention-1490614