https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/03/politics/democrats-delegate-rules-2020-explained/index.html
3,979 pledged delegates
What is a pledged delegate? A pledged delegate is a delegate allocated to a candidate based on his or her performance in a caucus or primary. The campaigns have the ability to vet these delegates and can even submit a list of names to represent them.
Simple enough, right? Wrong!
2,591 district-level pledged delegates -- Not all pledged delegates are selected in the same way. There are state-level delegates and district-level delegates. Most district-level delegates are determined at either a congressional district or state legislative district level.
1,388 state-level pledged delegates -- The rest of the pledged delegates, 1,388 of them, are awarded at the state level. And there are two kinds of state-level delegates:
- "Pledged Party Leader and Elected Officials (PLEO)" delegates. These are high-ranking elected officials, like big-city mayors, who get to be delegates at the convention. They're pledged proportionally to the top performers in their states.
- At-large pledged delegates, who are selected by the state party. If a candidate drops out of the race after winning state-wide delegates, their sate-level at-large pledged delegates are redistributed among the remaining viable candidates. All the state-level pledged delegates won by Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, for instance, could be doled out to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, depending on results in a particular state.
How to get delegates without winning anything -- It is possible for a candidate to get less than 15% in the statewide contest but still obtain delegates by getting better than 15% at the district level. That's how Klobuchar emerged from Iowa with a delegate. She did very well in the 4th Congressional District, but got less than the 15% threshold statewide.
If one candidate is ahead, as Biden was in South Carolina, there's a good chance he or she will get a good portion of the delegates from that state. But Sanders still got 15 delegates there.
The after-primary: What happens to the delegates of former campaigns?
After the voting, the coming together. The last primary contest will be in June, but about 90% of the country will have had a say by the end of April. Assuming there is no one with a clear majority, that will leave some three months for campaigns to reach out to delegates pledged to former candidates as well as to unpledged delegates who had supported former candidates in order to solicit support on the convention floor.
What happens to delegates pledged to dropouts? District-level delegates pledged to former candidates will become very popular if the fight between Biden and Sanders goes all the way to the convention. There's nothing that legally requires them to vote for anyone in particular, although different state parties have different rules. The national party says they should follow their conscience. Most state-level pledged delegates have not been selected yet, so they will be reallocated among remaining candidates once they are finally selected.
Best case. Most Democrats agree that the best scenario would be for all but the winning candidate to suspend their campaigns before the convention. The system is built assuming the party comes together. This year, however, that seems less likely than in years past.
Worst case. These things usually work out before there is voting on the convention floor. The last time the first round of voting didn't anoint a Democratic nominee was 1952 (that was Adlai Stevenson, and Democrats lost in November of that year, to Dwight Eisenhower).
After really difficult primaries, Democrats usually lose.
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Here’s what happens to delegates after their candidates drop out
The answer is a little different depending on the type of delegate.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/6/21166863/what-happens-delegates-candidates-drop-out
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The two futures for delegates of now-defunct campaigns, briefly explained
The treatment of the delegates won by candidates who have since dropped out differs slightly depending on the type of delegate, according to the DNC rules.
That’s because candidates are able to win two kinds of pledged delegates: They can get statewide delegates if they hit the 15 percent threshold in a state overall, and they can get district-level delegates if they hit 15 percent in a congressional district. (Every state also has a number of unpledged “superdelegates” that could play a role at the DNC, but we won’t talk about those for now because they don’t get a first-ballot vote on who the nominee should be.)
Here’s what will happen to each type of pledged delegate following the candidates’ suspensions:
Statewide pledged delegates: These delegates will be reallocated to candidates who are still in the race when the states elect their delegates — a process that typically takes place after the primary and before the convention in July. Candidates who have hit the necessary 15 percent threshold statewide, and whose campaigns are still active, will be eligible to pick up these statewide delegates. That means, depending on the state, they’ll be given to Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders, or split between the two.
Take Utah, for example. Although Bloomberg and Warren both reached the 15 percent viability threshold in the state, they’ve since suspended their campaigns. As a result, any delegates they gained are proportionally reallocated to Biden and Sanders, with more going to Sanders because he did better in the state.
Frontloading HQ’s Josh Putnam laid out what some of the math looks like in this Twitter thread, but the gist is that there are currently 49 statewide delegates that have been won by former candidates, and about half would go to Biden and half to Sanders.
District-level pledged delegates: These delegates would become “free agents” at the convention and can vote for whichever candidate they are interested in supporting in the first round at the time. District-level delegates that have already been won are not reallocated for the time being and will proceed to the convention.
Of course, all pledged delegates are solely bound by just that: a pledge. This means that any delegates in general, even those whose candidates haven’t dropped out, could theoretically defect, though it’s not likely.
The final choices of the district-level pledged delegates of a candidate who’s dropped out are also potentially influenced by a candidate’s endorsement. Given Bloomberg’s support of Biden, for example, his district-level delegates might feel more pressure to shift their backing in that direction.
The candidates who have suspended their campaigns don’t have a ton of delegates — but they could make a difference in a close contest
It’s worth noting that the candidates who have dropped out (unsurprisingly) haven’t been able to pick up a significant proportion of delegates so far. But any additional support will be important in the event of a close contest.
A candidate needs 1,991 delegates, a majority, in order to win the Democratic nomination outright. In total, the four candidates who have suspended their campaigns have 130 delegates so far.
Below are the number of delegates that every candidate who’s dropped out has accrued at this point, according to the DecisionDesk tracker:
Elizabeth Warren: 49
Mike Bloomberg: 48
Pete Buttigieg: 26
Amy Klobuchar: 7
The majority of these delegates are at the district level and poised to be “free agents” at the convention. Eighty-eight are at the district level, while 42 are at the state level.
Depending on how tight things wind up being between Sanders and Biden, these delegates could end up making the difference.
Congratulations to our presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden!
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Thanks again. 
