On "Forbes Newsroom," presidential historian Professor David Greenberg spoke about what a superdelegate is.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Now, there's another phrase or word that we might hear in the coming months, and that's
00:06superdelegate.
00:08What is the difference between a delegate and superdelegate, and how do they play into
00:11this process?
00:12So, in the 1980s, the Democrats created the second class of delegates called superdelegates.
00:20I think they're now called automatic delegates, but everyone still calls them superdelegates.
00:25These are people who simply by virtue of their position, being a sitting governor, elected
00:31member of Congress, certain other offices, automatically get a vote.
00:38But under new rules, they don't get a vote on that first ballot.
00:43So in most of our last 50, 60 years, we've only had one ballot.
00:50That's all it took because you had a winner going into the convention.
00:55But in an open convention, those first 4,000 delegates might divide themselves among four
01:01different possibilities.
01:02So then on the second round, the superdelegates also get a vote.
01:08So their preferences are now in consideration, and the thinking is they would sort of weight
01:15the choice toward a more established, mainstream, proven elected official, less likely than
01:25an ordinary delegate to back someone who's either ideologically eccentric or has an unusual
01:31background or that kind of thing.