Superdelegate

In American politics, a superdelegate is a delegate to a presidential nominating convention who is seated automatically.

In Democratic National Conventions, superdelegates—described in formal party rules as the party leaders and elected official (PLEO) category—make up slightly under 15% of all convention delegates. Before 2018, Democratic superdelegates were free to support any candidate for the presidential nomination in all rounds of balloting. (This contrasts with pledged delegates, who were selected based on the party presidential primaries and caucuses in each U.S. state, in which voters choose among candidates for the party's presidential nomination.) In 2018, the Democratic National Committee reduced the influence of superdelegates by barring them from voting on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, allowing them to vote only in a contested convention.

In Republican National Conventions, each Republican Party state chairman and two district-level committee members from each state are automatically seated as delegates, but they are mostly obliged to vote for their state's popular vote winner under the rules of the party branch to which they belong.