Republican National Convention
The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the Republican Party in the United States. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal of the Republican National Convention is to officially nominate and confirm a candidate for president and vice president, adopt a comprehensive party platform and unify the party, as well as publicize and launch the fall campaign.
For the next scheduled convention, see 2024 Republican National Convention.Delegates from all fifty U.S. states and from American dependencies and territories, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, attend the convention and cast their votes. Like the Democratic National Convention, the Republican National Convention marks the formal end of the primary election period and the start of the general election season. In 2020, all parties replaced the usual conventions with short online programs.
The party's presidential nominee is chosen primarily by pledged delegates, which are in turn selected through a series of individual state caucuses and primary elections. The size of delegations to the Republican National Convention, for each state, territory, or other political subdivision, are described by Rule 14 of the party's national rules.[6] The party does not use superdelegates as does the Democratic Party, and all delegates are pledged to a candidate in some fashion.
The Republican Party's rules leave discretion to the states in choosing how to award their respective pledged delegates to the candidates. Some states may use a statewide winner-take-all method, where the primary candidate who receives the most popular votes in a state gets all of its pledged delegates. Other states may use a proportional representation system, where the pledged delegates are instead distributed to the candidates in proportion to its votes.[7][8]
Three leaders of each state, territory, and Washington D.C.'s Republican Party (its national committeeman, its national committeewoman and its chairperson) are automatically nominated as pledged delegates to the national convention.[6]
Since 2012, the number of pledged delegates initially allocated to each of the 50 U.S. states is: Ten at-large delegates, plus three district delegates for each of the state's congressional districts.[6][9] As each state has at least one congressional district, the minimum number of delegates from this allocation for any state is 13.
Jurisdictions with non-voting congressmembers are instead given a fixed amount of pledged at-large delegates. In 2020, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands each get six at-large delegates; Puerto Rico receives 20; and Washington, D.C., gets 16.[6]
The Republican Party awards bonus pledged delegates to each jurisdiction based on two main factors (where applicable): whether its electoral college votes went to the Republican candidate in the last presidential election, and on how well the state party has done in electing Republicans to state and congressional elections.[6]
The bonus delegates thus reward states that vote for Republican candidates and punish those which do not. As examples, for the 2020 Convention using California and Texas (the two most populous states, California being a Democrat stronghold and Texas a Republican one):