Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Let’s Talk About Contested Conventions

Just don’t call them “brokered.”

February 13, 2020 at 12:57 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

A delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. — A delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
Photograph: Bloomberg

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I suppose I need to talk about contested conventions. After all, Nate Silver’s model projects a better than one-in-three chance that no candidate will accumulate a simple majority of the delegates at the end of the primaries and caucuses, and a lot of pundits are proclaiming that such an outcome is almost inevitable at this point. So, contested conventions.