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

As my colleagues have already noted, the Republican primary is essentially over. But Haley's Vermont victory is the first time a Republican woman will win a state's presidential primary. (She also won the primary in D.C.) So, check a box for a broken record. But I had my eye on Republican and Democratic women in downballot races tonight, and overall it looks like Republican women without their party's or Trump's endorsement struggled to win in places where they have a good chance of winning in November. An exception is in North Carolina's 1st District, where wealthy business owner Laurie Buckhout is the projected winner. That seat will be tight contest in November. As of writing this, Democratic women are looking to be doing well in safely blue districts, like California's 12th and 29th, and Texas's 32nd. But tonight's results suggests the senators from California will both be men, after decades of female leadership in those seats. I'll continue to watch women's progress in both parties for 538, to identify trends and whether more records will be broken.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor

The presidential primaries are, for all intents and purposes, over. That means we can finally shift our focus to the primaries that are going to have the most impact on the outcome in November, in the House and Senate. Tonight we saw the first of those contests, and they did not disappoint. In Alabama, an appropriator, Rep. Jerry Carl, lost to a firebrand colleague, Barry Moore, in a member versus member primary. (Let's see what that does to morale in the GOP conference.) In California, Adam Schiff successfully engineered an uncompetitive general election against Republican Steve Garvey, freeing up tens of millions in small donor dollars for races elsewhere around the country. In North Carolina, a bevy of upcoming runoffs will help determine what shape the next House GOP conference takes. And in Texas, we're going to find out in the 23rd District just how much deviation from party orthodoxy is tolerated, when Tony Gonzales faces the music for his votes on a gun bill (negotiated by the state's own senior GOP senator!). Presidential season may be over, but the fun is just beginning.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

In the early primaries and caucuses on the GOP side, a few patterns became clear. Donald Trump marched toward the nomination by winning most groups of Republican primary voters, but Haley proved a bit more competitive in pockets with large numbers of college-educated voters. Trump has expanded his 2016 coalition by winning more voters on the right, which we can see by his strength in places where Ted Cruz did well eight years ago. Haley, meanwhile, competes among moderates. Tonight, that meant dominant wins for Trump across a set of states, from Virginia and North Carolina to Texas and California. Among tonight's states, Virginia's demographics make it more friendly to non-Trump candidates — Rubio almost won it in 2016 — so Haley's failure to breech 40 percent there is yet another sign that she's able to win only a minority faction within today's GOP.

Overall, there isn't much surprise in tonight's Republican presidential results, beyond the question of whether Haley will eke across the 50 percent threshold and so take home all of Vermont's delegates. In part, that reflects the nationalization of presidential politics. In state after state, the same kinds of communities lean towards or away from Trump, so the results follow pretty consistently from a state's demographics and prior voting behavior. That makes for predictable patterns — and a less than surprising Super Tuesday.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor

Thinking about what Kaleigh said, the fact that Trump and Biden have their primary races all but sewn up does make for some blah primary election nights. That's why all the attention shifted to Vermont, which Haley is likely to win, and to American Samoa on the Democratic side, where we all learned that someone named Jason Palmer had been running all along. I'm like Mary and ready to turn to the general election, when we can focus on how Biden and Trump are appealing to voters and what the consequences of their stances and potential victory might be.

—Monica Potts, 538