2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Math - Hillary will have a heck of a time winning the required PD# [View all]onenote
(42,581 posts)The answer of course is that there is no required number of PDs. The only "required" number is 2383 delegates out of the combined total of 4765 pledged and superdelegates.
In theory, a candidate could get as few as 1669 (41 percent) of the pledged delegates and still win the nomination if every one of the superdelegates voted for that candidate. Indeed, this is essentially what Sanders is hoping for -- that even if he doesn't get a majority of the pledged delegates, enough superdelegates support him to get to 2383. That's a pretty sizable hurdle given the number of supers that have already committed to Clinton and the historical truth that supers don't generally change horses after they've committed.
As has been pointed out here more times than anyone could possibly count, the historical practice is that if a candidate gets to a majority of the pledged delegates and they have commitments from enough superdelegates to put them over the 1/2 of the combined total threshold, they're the winner. The vote at the convention is simply a formality to ratify what everyone knows will happen.