What exactly is a Superdelegate? This video will help you to understand:
The superdelegate — it’s the term being tossed around every time a Democratic primary or caucus is held, votes are cast and delegates assigned to a candidate. But what is a superdelegate?
We wanted to know more about the Democratic Party’s unique (and fairly recent) addition to its presidential candidate selection process. So, we looked into it, sitting down with Dr. Matthew Parks, Assistant Professor of Politics at The King’s College in New York City.
The first thing to know is that superdelegates are unique to one party — the Democratic Party.
Parks explained that the superdelegate is something Democrats introduced into their process in the 1980s. Dr. Parks told us the superdelegate was created ”after the party elites got worried that they had given up too much control with the 1968 reforms.”
At present, the Democratic Party confers superdelegate status to more than 700 elected democrats, party insiders and others inside the state and local party machines.