How does everyone know who the candidate is going to be before a convention?

How does everyone know who the candidate is going to be before a convention?

Thea Brodkin (Voter Service Chair) gives expert video advice on: How are presidential candidates selected?; Can I affect who is selected as a presidential candidate?; What happens at a national convention? and more...

They're trying to see how many of the total votes that they're going to get at the party convention. The parties know how many states have to vote for a specific candidate for that party to win it's nomination at the national convention of that party. So, they have the total votes that are cast, and each state has as a portion of that, so they're counting votes as they go along. So you'll see as the primaries go they'll say, "This candidate has this percentage, this one has this percentage, this candidate has that percentage." It does change. Right now we're faced with a lot of choices which is good. I think the more choices we have the better our democracy is working. Of course, a lot of those candidates will not be there at the end. We're going to narrow it down from one to each political party, so candidates will drop out before the end of the primary season. We're starting to see that right now. They put their name in a hat and they see how they do, they try to raise money because that's a big part of the process and if they don't do so well they may decide not to continue.