those they feel would not be supportive. Currently there are 4,051 pledged delegates. Of the 4,765 total Democratic delegates, 714 (approximately 15%) are superdelegates, which are usually Democratic members of Congress, governors, former presidents and former congressional and party leaders, as well as all current members of the Democratic National Committee and at times additionally added delegates (which had in fact enlarged the percentage of superdelegates towards 20% in the 2000s). They are not required to indicate preference for a candidate. Since 2018, the rules and bylaw committee of the party decided to change the rules so that superdelegates would not get a vote on the first ballot unless the outcome was certain. The Democratic Party uses a proportional representation to determine how many delegates each candidate is awarded in each state. A candidate must win at least 15% of the vote in a particular contest or in a district of that contest in order to receive any delegates. Pledged delegates are awarded proportionally on both statewide and district level. So it is possible for candidates to win delegates even if they receive fewer than 15% of overall votes in a state provided they receive more than 15% in a particular district. There is no process to win superdelegates, since they can vote for whomever they please, but until 2016 a candidate needed to win a simple majority of total delegates to earn the Democratic nomination. However, it had been a usual campaign strategy to negotiate with as many superdelegates as possible to get their non-binding public endorsement and win a psychologically or even mathematically important numeral advantage by counting their awaited vote into one's delegate numbers. There have even been presidential nominations in the past, which had been ultimately decided by such superdelegate endorsements. Republican Party The Republican Party utilizes a similar system with slightly different terminology, employing bound and unbound delegates (also known as automatic delegates, but rarely as superdelegates, as their influence is much smaller compared to those in the Democratic Party). Of the total 2,472 Republican delegates, most are bound delegates who, as with the Democratic Party, are elected at the state or local level. To become the Republican Party nominee, the candidate must win a simple majority of 1,276 of the 2,472 total delegates at the Republican National Convention. The Republican Party has a little amount of unbound delegates. The only people who get unbound