The 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and caucuses were a series of electoral contests organized by the Democratic Party to select the 4 524 delegates to the Democratic National Convention held August 3–6 and determine the nominee for President of the United States in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The elections took place within all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories and occurred between February 3 and June 12, 2020. An extra 240 unpledged delegates or "superdelegates", were appointed by the party leadership independently of the primaries' electoral process. The convention also approved the party's platform and vice-presidential nominee. The Democratic nominee challenged other presidential candidates in national elections to succeed Pre