March 5 was Super Tuesday — the biggest election day of the year until the one in November! With former President Donald Trump projected to win 14 of the day's 15 GOP presidential nominating contests, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced Wednesday morning that she is suspending her campaign.
It was also the first downballot primary day of 2024, with important contests for Senate, House and governor in states like Alabama, California, North Carolina and Texas.
538 reporters, analysts and contributors broke down the election results as they came in with live updates, analysis and commentary. Read our full live blog below.
Despite the lack of suspense, Republicans have been tuning in to the presidential primary
Although the race has mostly gone as expected, with Trump securing most of the delgates in the first several GOP nominating contests, Republicans still say they are paying attention, according to a February Echelon Insights survey. Seventy-nine percent of Republican likely voters in the survey say they are paying a lot of or some attention to the race, while just 20 percent say they’re paying only a little or no attention at all. Among those who aren’t tuning in, 36 percent say the number one reason is because they’re tired of politics, while 17 percent say it’s too early and 15 percent say they don’t think the race is competitive.
Haley got her first win this past weekend, but Trump crushed everywhere else
On Sunday, Republicans in Washington, D.C., voted for Haley by nearly 30 percentage points in the GOP's party-run primary, giving her all 19 national delegates from the nation's capital. This marked her first victory anywhere in this year’s primary contest, and the first ever primary or caucus victory for a woman in the history of Republican nomination races. Yet the other contests that took place just ahead of Super Tuesday otherwise showcased Trump's strong hold over his party's base. This included victories on Saturday in caucus-convention races in Idaho, Michigan and Missouri, and in North Dakota's Republican caucuses on Monday.
Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, Mar. 3, 2024.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
In Michigan, Republicans gathered at Saturday's state party convention to allocate 39 national delegates from the state’s 13 congressional districts (three per district). The voters consisted of precinct delegates mostly elected at the August 2022 state primary as well as Republican elected officials, and they handed Trump all 39 district-level delegates. This result brought Trump's Michigan haul to 51 of the state's 55 delegates, after he had already won 12 of its 16 at-large delegates in the Feb. 27 primary.
The Michigan GOP's split primary-caucus approach came about in part because national Democrats added Michigan to the early part of their presidential primary calendar, prompting the Democratic-controlled state government to shift the state’s primary date into late February. Since the new date violated the national GOP's calendar rules, Michigan Republicans used a workaround whereby the primary results would allocate the state's at-large national delegates, but the state party didn’t formally make the allocation until March, at Saturday’s caucus-convention that also allocated district-level delegates.
Trump also swept caucuses in Idaho and Missouri on Saturday, and then North Dakota on Monday. In Idaho, Trump won 85 percent of caucusgoers, easily surpassing the state's 50 percent winner-take-all threshold to capture all 32 of Idaho's national delegates. In Missouri, Trump won every state- and congressional district convention delegate elected at local caucuses around the state, all but guaranteeing that he will sweep all 51 national delegates when the district and state conventions formally allocate delegates in April and May, respectively. And in a near-repeat of Idaho, Trump won 84 percent of caucusgoers in North Dakota on Monday to claim all 29 of the state’s national delegates.
In total, Trump's magic number tonight is 497 delegates, while Haley's is 543. Elliott's model thinks Trump needs to sweep Arkansas, California, Tennessee and Texas while also taking about half of the delegates available in Alaska, Colorado and North Carolina. Meanwhile, if she wants to have a shot at winning the nomination, Haley must win all the delegates in Alabama, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont and Virginia — a tall order on a night where winning even one state isn't a certainty.
This is the best live blog in the industry ;), but I know you may have some chores to finish up before settling in for a night of election results. Those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves! So if you’d rather listen to our analysis, I’ve got a podcast episode for you. Nathaniel, Leah, Geoff, friend of the pod Tia Mitchell and I sat down yesterday to talk about what to expect from the top of the ticket tonight. Where might Haley overperform? And when will Trump sew up the nomination?
We also talked about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he’ll retire from his post this November and what that means for the direction of the Republican Party. And we discussed the political and policy chaos that has followed the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in February that embryos are children, complicating the procurement of in vitro fertilization services in the state.
Later tonight we’ll record a podcast reacting to the Super Tuesday results, so make sure to check your feeds tomorrow morning too!
