Why AP isn’t using ‘presumptive nominee’ to describe Trump, Biden
WASHINGTON — Although President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are the overwhelming favorites to re-clinch their parties’ nomination for a second term, they are not yet the “presumptive nominees.”
Although you may hear the term more often in the coming days, The Associated Press won’t use the designation until a candidate has collected the number of delegates needed to win a majority vote at the national party conventions this summer. That point won’t come until more states vote. The earliest Trump could win the nomination is March 12; for Biden it is March 19.
Trump is looking to win his fourth straight early contest Saturday as he faces former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina. Trump won easily in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, where he and Haley did not face each other in the vote.
Biden scored impressive victories in South Carolina and Nevada earlier this month. He also won as a write-in candidate in New Hampshire after refusing to campaign or appear on the ballot.
A presidential candidate only officially becomes the Republican or Democratic candidate if he wins the vote on the convention floor. It hasn’t always been this way. Decades ago, presidential candidates might have participated in primaries and caucuses, but the contests were largely decorative, and the eventual nominees were not known until delegates and party bosses sorted things out for themselves at the conventions.
Today the roles are reversed. Now it is the conventions that are largely merely ornamental, and it is the votes cast in the primaries and caucuses that decide the nominees. Because of this role reversal, for the past half century the eventual nominees were known before the conventions, sometimes long before the conventions or even long before they had won enough delegates to unofficially secure the nomination.
Nevertheless, the AP will not call anyone the “presumptive nominee” until a candidate reaches the so-called magic number of delegates needed for a majority at the convention. That’s true even if the candidate is the only major competitor left in the race.
For Republicans, that magic number is 1,215; for Democrats it’s more of a moving target, but currently it stands at 1,968.