Did Biden’s Withdrawal Undermine or Uphold the Will of the Voters?

Is it undemocratic that Kamala Harris will win the nomination without receiving a single primary vote?

Crashers, I know you’re used to the videos, but we’re tying something new today. I’m a regular contributor to Barrons.com, and in this month’s column, I tackled one of the questions I’ve been asked most frequently in recent weeks:

Was the will of the voters overruled by Biden dropping out and delegates rallying behind Kamala Harris?

My answer to that question is below and not behind a paywall!

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President Biden’s departure from the presidential race after he easily clinched the Democratic nomination has led both voters and pundits to question whether the will of the voters has been ignored. Members of the Democratic Party led a clear effort to replace him at the top of the ticket even after primary voters said he was their choice.

It took only hours for influential Democrats to rally around Vice President Kamala Harris even though she did not secure a single vote or delegate during the primaries. With the Democratic National Convention still weeks away, Harris has already garnered enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee. This sequence of events has not only stirred skepticism among voters but also exposed a layer of irony in the Democratic Party’s messaging. For years, Democrats have framed their opposition to former President Donald Trump as a defense of democracy itself. Yet, the rapid installation of Harris as the nominee, bypassing the primary voters’ choice, perhaps suggests a flaw in the party’s rhetoric.

Hence the question: Has the will of the voters been overturned?

In a technical, practical sense, the answer is a clear no. The reasoning stems from a common misunderstanding of the primary process itself. When we show up to support a candidate in a primary, we aren’t directly voting for an actual person. Instead, we are voting for a slate of state delegates who will then go to the party’s national convention and cast their vote as delegates for a specific candidate based on the results in their respective states. This is why political analysts track the number of delegates throughout the primary process rather than the percentage of votes going to the various candidates.

The first candidate to be pledged a majority of the available delegates—which for Democrats is nearly 4,000—becomes the presumptive party nominee. The nomination only becomes official after the party delegates formally cast their vote at the party’s national convention. Put simply, we select the delegates in the primaries, and the delegates select the nominee at the convention.

In Biden’s case, he won over 99% of the available Democratic delegates throughout the months-long primary contest. Had he continued on to the Democratic convention in Chicago starting on Aug. 19, those delegates would have officially made Biden the Democratic nominee on the first ballot. However–and this is a big however–because Biden dropped out before any official convention voting took place, he effectively released his delegates. That frees them up to support whomever they feel is the right candidate to replace Biden on the ticket.

Biden dropped out only 29 days before the start of the DNC and 97 days before Election Day itself, not to mention early voting. There simply wasn’t enough time to re-run the primary process. The timing of President Biden’s decision—even if it came at the hands of his own party’s pressure—ensured that the Party’s rules would kick in, leaving delegates without voter instructions to rally behind a new candidate.

But that technical answer is a little unsatisfying. At the end of the day, the candidate who won the majority of primary votes won’t be on the ballot come November.

This is where the broader context of voter participation in primary elections becomes important. Historically, turnout for presidential primaries is dismally low. Only about 23% of eligible voters participated in the 2020 primaries for both parties. For Democrats in 2024, Biden’s lack of serious challengers in the primaries led to even lower engagement, meaning that an extremely small fraction of the electorate ultimately influenced the primary outcome. Of course, it matters who those voters want, but in absolute terms there just aren’t that many of them.

Moreover, there is a reasonable case that what we saw in the weeks leading up to Biden’s exit from the race was voters exercising their will in a constantly evolving political environment. Biden’s lackluster debate performance prompted a significant, public grassroots pressure campaign for a change in leadership. Yes, we saw Democratic leaders calling for Biden to drop out, but much of that pressure came from those leaders relaying what they were hearing from their own constituents.

In this light, the party’s rapid endorsement of Harris can be seen not as a rejection of voter will, but as a response to a dynamic and pressing need to present the strongest possible candidate against former President Trump. The move was a tactical decision aimed at maximizing electoral chances in a crucial election cycle. Many voters in other times and places wish their party’s would only be so strategic and dynamic.

And if enough Democratic voters truly feel spurned by their party, and especially their leaders, they will have another chance to be heard come November.