Starting with the Iowa caucuses which were held on Feb. 3, and the remaining primaries scheduled to continue into June, all 50 U.S. states and seven U.S. territories are meant to allocate delegates to the Democratic party’s candidates.
The candidate who receives the most delegates, not votes, determines who wins the Democratic nomination. These delegates are individuals selected by each state or district campaign whose purpose will be to represent them at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) scheduled to take place July 13-16 in Milwaukee, Wisc. Sixty percent of the delegates were to be decided following the March 17 primaries, and 90 percent of the total delegates to the convention will have been allocated after the primaries scheduled for April 28.
The process of the Democratic nomination continued on March 17 with three Democratic primaries and caucuses being held in Arizona, Florida and Illinois. In the midst of the current crisis of the coronavirus (COVID-19), with the exception of Ohio postponing their primary, the Democratic primaries scheduled for March 17 took place. Former Vice President Joe Biden took all three primaries, with 41 percentage points in Florida, 28.4 percentage points in Illinois and 23.8 percentage points in Arizona, and winning at least 239 delegates compared to Bernie Sanders winning 102.
Following his wins of all three of the primaries held on March 17, Biden spoke from his Wilmington, Del. home, saying, “his campaign had a very good night,” and also spoke on the coronavirus crisis, telling Americans that, “it’s important to get through this crisis protecting both the public health and our democracy.”
At this time, it is unknown as to when the remaining primaries will be held. As Louisiana, whose primary was scheduled to take place on March 24, and Georgia, whose primary was scheduled to take place on April 4, have both postponed their contests.
As part of our coverage in TurnOUT: How LGBTQ Organizations Have Mobilized the Community, this project has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems, solutionsjournalism.org.