WTF Is a Contested Convention, and Can It Stop Trump?

Pundits have been talking a lot about contested conventions lately — more so, it seems, each time Donald Trump opens his mouth. But few people (including, frankly, many of those pundits) seem to understand what a contested convention really is, or what the implications could be for this election.

Here’s everything you need to know.

What does “contested convention” even mean?
Typically, by the time the national conventions take place in the summer of a presidential election year, the parties already have a pretty good idea who their nominees will be, based on primary results. A contested, or brokered, convention happens when the primary process fails to yield a consensus choice. If none of the candidates running in a party earn at least half of the delegates at stake in the primaries, then the delegates decide who the nominee will be at the convention.

Back up. Start at the beginning, please!
Before the general election in November, primaries and caucuses are held in every state and territory to decide who each party’s presidential nominee will be. Delegates are chosen at the state, congressional district or precinct level, and each state is represented by a certain number of those delegates at the national convention, where those delegates vote for the nominee. The number of delegates each state gets is based both on that state’s population and its importance to the party in the general election.

In theory, the candidates competing in each primary are awarded a share of that state’s delegates based on their performance and according to a different, often convoluted, set of rules determined by the state party. But if no candidate has an outright majority of delegates by the convention, then, technically, all bets are off.

Anyone could be nominated?
Yes, technically. But for someone who isn’t running at all (e.g., a Mitt Romney or a Paul Ryan) to suddenly swoop in at the convention itself would require the creation of a new rule by the committee that governs such things. Most of the people who are on that committee right now say they aren’t inclined to do that.

They can just make up rules?
Yes, the rules of that governed the previous convention are considered temporary until the rules committee — made up of one male and one female delegate from each state and territory — re-adopts them. There is one rule in particular, lobbied into existence by Mitt Romney supporters in 2012, that says only candidates who win a majority in at least eight states will be considered for the nomination. If readopted, that rule could make it impossible for anyone other than Donald Trump to win (he’s the only who has met the threshold at this point), but committee members seem inclined to ditch it this year.

What’s more probable is that a candidate who already has some small number of delegates — a John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush or, hell, even a Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee or Carly Fiorina — emerges as a compromise over multiple rounds of balloting. That’s what happened in 1920, when Warren G. Harding, in fifth place at the start of the convention, was named the nominee after the 10th ballot.