What Happens If One Of The Presidential Candidates Has To Be Replaced?

How either presidential candidate would be replaced on the 2024 ballot is all about the timing.

Left: Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images. Right: Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

With Monday’s Iowa caucuses behind us, the 2024 election is officially underway. And to be honest, considering how consequential this election is bound to be, 2024 started out with a bit of a whimper. 

With only Republicans caucusing on Monday and with frigid below zero temperatures, turnout was 41% down from 2016, and Trump could only muster 51% or so support, in a party where he is the putative leader.

As analysts dug into the entrance polls and then the ultimate results, there was a red flag hiding there for Trump.

According to CNN’s Entrance Poll of 1,628 GOP Iowa caucusgoers, 31% said if Trump is convicted of one of the many crimes he is charged with this year, he would not be “fit to be president.”

This tracks with a NYT/Siena College poll from December that found 24% of Trump supporters said he should not be the nominee if he is convicted of a crime.

And a January Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 58% of American adults would not vote for Donald Trump if he is “convicted of a felony crime by a jury.”

No wonder Donald Trump’s strategy is delay delay delay. His best hope is for the election to come before any criminal trial verdict does, which could enable him to avoid accountability and quash the investigations once president. 

But what if he can’t?

What happens if Trump is convicted and his poll numbers tank, leaving Republicans no choice but to replace him? Or if he is ruled ineligible to be president? Or what if he, or President Biden for that matter, is incapacitated for any number of reasons? What happens then?

Five Thirty Eight put together a comprehensive breakdown of the processes for replacing the candidates at various stages of the nominating process. In this essay, I’ll examine their deep dive and explore possible permutations of what would happen if either of the likely major party nominees becomes indisposed and unable to appear on the general election ballot.

A quick pledge break before we dive in! If you’ve been meaning to support our work, now’s a great time!

Between January And March

On Monday night during MSNBC’s Iowa caucus coverage, Joy Reid posed this question:

“What happens if Trump gets the nomination and then the Supreme Court rules that he’s not eligible to be president of the United States? Or somehow, one of his trials happens and he gets convicted?

“So what happens?”

She turned the question to former RNC Chair Michael Steele. He made it clear that the solution for replacing Trump as the nominee in such an instance would lay with the Republican convention’s rules committee, which would then presumably create a path by which an alternate candidate is selected.

This fits with a popular theory: The reason Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have been running against Trump while treating him with embarrassingly kid gloves is to be left standing in such an event. When Trump is booted from the ballot or otherwise becomes unable to serve, they will have proven themselves the next best options.

And certainly, if Trump has to leave the race between now and March before much voting has taken place, they would be in prime position.

As 538 puts it:

Indeed, if Trump were to drop out or pass away within the next couple months, Republicans have a number of well-funded, formidable alternatives, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who are already on primary ballots across the country and could win the nomination in Trump's stead.

As Elaine Kamarck of The Brookings Institution told 538:

"If it's now, there's still somewhat of a chance to have a real race."

The same cannot be said for President Biden, however. If he has to leave the race during this early period in the campaign, Democratic candidates would be hard-pressed to collect enough delegates to win the nomination outright. 

For one thing, filing deadlines have largely passed or are about to. And secondly, the two other candidates currently running in the Democratic primary, author Marianne Williamson and Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips, are struggling to even win ballot positions in certain states, as 538 makes clear:

Out of 28 contests with candidate lists as of Jan. 5, Phillips missed out on three while Williamson didn't make it in five, and Biden is the only candidate on the ballot in the delegate-rich states of Florida and North Carolina.

In fact, with Biden out of the race, top-tier Democrats could flood in, seeking to qualify on state ballots or wage write-in campaigns in states that allow them, in order to win delegates. 

But January 5th was the filing deadline in states amounting to two-thirds of all Democratic presidential delegates. Even with a shake-up this early in the race, the Democratic nominee would likely need to be determined at the convention. 

Between March And The Nominating Conventions

If Trump or Biden were to drop out of the presidential race between March and June, it would be impossible for any new candidate to win an outright majority of delegates in either party (assuming that the vast majority of delegates to that point had been earned by Trump or Biden.)

As 538 lays out:

​​By mid-March (March 12 for Republicans, March 19 for Democrats), both parties will have allocated a majority of their delegates. As a result, even though there would still be several primaries to go, a new entrant to the race or an existing candidate who hadn't won a significant number of delegates yet couldn't possibly win a delegate majority, and no one would go to the convention as the presumptive nominee.

This means delegates at the convention would have an outsized role. Suddenly we could see intense jockeying for delegate slots. It’s important to note that, for Democrats, delegates are “pledged” to a certain candidate, while Republican delegates are “bound” to theirs. This makes a last-minute shakeup more manageable for Democratic delegates at the convention.

And while Kamala Harris would technically be on the presidential ticket, she would not automatically be awarded his delegates at the convention in the event that Biden had to leave the race, since the two offices are nominated by two different ballots at the convention. 

But what if something dire occurred, and suddenly Kamala Harris was actually serving as president rather than vice president? That could present a different scenario altogether.

Per 538:

Lara Brown, a political scientist and author of "Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants," told 538 that she does not believe that the Democratic convention would be all that contested in the event Biden passed away. There could be a symbolic first ballot vote for Biden, "then essentially, [the convention could] create a point of order … and then do a second ballot," likely for Harris to be the nominee, Brown said.

But what about Trump? His delegates would technically be bound to him, at least on the first ballot and perhaps for multiple rounds of voting. And the means by which those delegates are “unbound” and able to shift to another candidate would be determined by each state Republican Party. Such a circumstance likely would require delegates to vote for a rule change at the convention in order to provide a path to allow for an alternate candidate to step in, as Michael Steele indicated on Monday night.

On June 4th, the final state Democratic and Republican primaries will be held, meaning that any candidate shakeup between then and each party’s nominating convention will necessitate a convention floor fight for the nomination. 

This summer, the Republican convention comes first, running from July 15-18 in Milwaukee. For Democrats, it runs from August 19-22 in Chicago. According to 538:

Any new candidate who wants to run at this point would have to get nominated at the convention itself, the rules for which are different for each party. At the Democratic convention, new candidates need to get at least 300 delegate signatures in order to be nominated. For Republicans, convention rules state that candidates have to submit evidence of support from a plurality of delegates in at least five states at least one hour before names are to be placed in nomination.

A situation only a political junkie could love.

Between The Conventions And Election Day

Now, let’s say everything goes as expected between now and the conventions. Donald Trump leaves the Republican convention as his party’s presidential nominee, as does Joe Biden his.

At that point, if one of the parties’ nominees dies or drops out, the power to nominate someone else shifts to the party committees: the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC).

For the DNC, per 538:

Chairman Jamie Harrison would confer with Democratic leadership in Congress and the Democratic Governors Association and would then take the decision to the DNC, according to the party's call to convention.

The 483 members of the DNC — who comprise the chairs and vice chairs of each state Democratic Party committee as well as members elected from all 56 states and territories, plus Democrats Abroad — would vote on a new nominee.

There are no rules as to who the nominee has to be, “they just need to get a majority of party members to vote for them.”

As for Republicans:

Like the Democrats, they could choose to have their committee members vote. There are three RNC members per state and territory, but they get to cast the same number of votes their state or territory's delegation was entitled to cast during the Republican National Convention. If members of a delegation aren't in agreement on who to support, their state or territory's votes would be divided equally among them. In order to become the nominee, a candidate must secure a majority of votes.

But the RNC is also "authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies" by reconvening the national convention.

For the GOP, this takes some unpacking. In the first instance, the new Republican nominee would be determined by a simple vote of the members of the RNC. In the second instance, it would be by a reconvening of the convention, meaning an election by the delegates. But as with Democrats, the newly nominated candidate is not required to have won the second highest number of delegates in the primary, nor to have even run in the primary or earned any delegates at all.

This process is fairly straightforward up to the point at which the ballots are printed. But things get wonky if one of the major parties’ nominees drops out once the presidential general election ballots are out with the candidates’ names on them.

At that point, per 538:

millions of Americans would cast ballots for the inactive candidate with the understanding that their Electoral College votes would really go to someone else — probably someone designated by the DNC or RNC.

Remember, we technically elect presidents indirectly via the Electoral College. The actual votes for president are cast by electors at their official nominating meeting in December. 

As author Lara Brown put it to 538:

"I would imagine what would happen is that parties would indicate to the electors who they should vote for."

Between Election Day And Inauguration Day

Let’s say Election Day comes and goes without incident (a big assumption, given what happened last time), but then the President-Elect dies or has to withdraw before the Electoral College holds its nominating meeting on December 17th. 

538 explains what would happen next:

According to the National Archives, there is no prescribed process for what to do if the president-elect dies between Election Day and the meeting of the Electoral College. (It would not automatically be the vice president-elect, as, legally, the presidential line of succession would not have kicked in yet.) So the (ex-)president-elect's electors would essentially get to pick the president. 

At this point, the national parties would step in. 538 cited author Brown again:

Brown said the DNC or RNC would likely signal to electors whom they should vote for. That could be Harris on the Democratic side or Trump's still-unannounced running mate on the Republican side. But Brown emphasized that some states would need to adjust their faithless electors laws to allow for this.

If the electors pledged to the President-Elect were not to vote together as expected, and no one received the requisite 270 electoral votes, the election would go to the House of Representatives to determine the president with something known as a contingent election, which you may recall was one of Trump supporters’ end games to get him back in office after losing the 2020 election.

Per 538,

The Constitution stipulates that each state's House delegation would cast a single vote for president, with a majority of states required for a candidate to win, and the Senate would elect a vice president based on a majority vote of its members individually.

This is seen by experts as a “highly unlikely” outcome.

And finally, if the new President-Elect makes it through the December 17th Electoral College meeting but becomes incapacitated ahead of January 20th, Inauguration Day:

the law is clear: the vice president-elect would be inaugurated instead. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution says, in part, "If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President."

If we’ve learned anything from 2016 and 2020, it’s to expect the unexpected, and this year, there are enough variables in play to at least prepare ourselves for every contingency.

But in the end, the best-case scenario for our nation is probably for Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump by an even greater margin than he did before, and begin to send Trump and MAGA into the dustbin of history where they belong.