Super Tuesday primaries 2024: Trump and Biden dominate, Haley drops out

538 tracked how Trump and Haley did, plus key U.S. House and Senate races.

Last Updated: March 5, 2024, 7:36 PM EST

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.

Latest headlines:

Here's how the news is developing.
Mar 05, 2024, 7:36 PM EST

Trump wins Virginia

ABC News projects that Trump will win Virginia's Republican presidential primary. We'll have to wait to see how the final totals break down, but this isn't much of a surprise considering Trump had comfortably led most polling of the GOP race in the Old Dominion. Now, Virginia's more highly-educated population and Trump's weaker performance there in 2016 probably makes it one of Haley's better states tonight. Yet the fact the result there has already been projected less than a half hour after polls closed may foreshadow a Trump sweep tonight. Loudoun County's early returns demonstrate how Haley is coming up short: Sitting outside of Washington, D.C., in vote-rich northern Virginia, Loudoun is a Democratic-leaning and highly affluent county — the kind of place Haley has done better in. But she's still trailing Trump there by around 6 percentage points, 52 percent to 46 percent, with one-third of the expected vote reporting.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

ABC News projects that Trump will win the Virginia Republican primary based on analysis of the exit poll and vote in so far.
ABC News projects that Trump will win the Virginia Republican primary based on analysis of the exit poll and vote in so far.

Mar 05, 2024, 7:40 PM EST

What’s at stake in the Trump-Haley primary

While we wait for polls to close and results to come in, I'll muse about the bigger picture here. Depending on how things go, this might be the end of Haley's candidacy. But either way, we should think about what's at stake in the contest between her and Trump. Broadly speaking, she has increasingly presented herself as the Trump/MAGA alternative. In some ways, she's made this distinction clear, most recently by suggesting she might not stick with her pledge to support the party nominee, and denouncing his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the rest of her candidacy has been mostly about other stuff — how she'd be more competitive against Biden, and about giving voters a choice in the primary. On one of the main issues that set Trump apart from the rest of the GOP field in 2016, immigration, Haley has also been very conservative, signing one of the toughest state bills when she was governor of South Carolina and adopting Trump's language about toughness at the border. As in 2016, Trump seems poised to soundly defeat his primary rivals. But in terms of the real GOP alternatives to Trumpism, it's definitely not 2016 anymore.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor

Republican National Committee spokesperson Madison Gesiotto Gilbert joined "The Big Story" to discuss the GOP's plans to support its nominee and take on President Joe Biden in November.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Madison Gesiotto Gilbert joined "The Big Story" to discuss the GOP's plans to support its nominee and take on President Joe Biden in November.
Mar 05, 2024, 7:30 PM EST

North Carolina Republicans aren’t worried about Trump’s indictments

The main concerns about the top candidates didn’t resonate with primary voters in North Carolina. Seventy-five percent of likely North Carolina Republican primary voters said that Trump’s criminal indictments were not a serious consideration for them, according to a February poll by Emerson College/The Hill, while 25 percent said the indictments raised “serious doubts” in their minds about voting for Trump. Democratic primary voters in the state were more worried about Biden’s age than Republican primary voters were about Trump’s indictments: 34 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said Biden’s age raised serious doubts about voting for him, while 66 percent said it was not a consideration.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

Mar 05, 2024, 7:30 PM EST

Trump takes North Carolina

No surprises so far in the Tar Heel state tonight: ABC News projects Trump will win the GOP primary and Biden will win the Democratic primary. I can also report that ABC News has projected Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has won the Republican primary for governor.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538

ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win the North Carolina Republican primary and President Joe Biden will win the North Carolina Democratic primary based on an analysis of the exit poll.
ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win the North Carolina Republican primary and President Joe Biden will win the North Carolina Democratic primary based on an analysis of the exit poll.