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.

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.


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Final thought: Groundhog Day in March as February's patterns carry over

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


Final thought: I'm looking forward to winning future Jason Palmer trivia questions

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


Final thought: What will Haley do?

On the presidential side, tonight basically went as expected: Trump will win at least 12 out of 15 contests, while Haley has chalked up only one win so far — a narrow win in Vermont, which was demographically well suited for her as it is home to a lot of independent voters, a lot of college graduates and few evangelicals. Trump also now leads the delegate race 908 to 62, as of midnight.

The question is, what will Haley do now? She has said all along that she wanted to give the voters on Super Tuesday a chance to weigh in on the race, and they did so, roundly rejecting her. She's now so far behind in the delegate race that she can't credibly say she still has a path to the nomination. She has no more public events scheduled, so it seems quite possible that she will drop out of the race, but we haven't heard from her so far tonight. Might she sleep on it and announce her withdrawal from the race later on Wednesday? That's really the only suspense left in this presidential primary.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


Final thought: Is it time to finally pivot to the general?

As we discussed earlier, using presidential primary results to read the tea leaves of the general election seems to be a particularly fraught exercise. The dynamics (and electorates) of the two types of contests are wildly different, and several of my colleagues pointed out a variety of ways in which this type of analysis could go awry.

But now that Biden and Trump are both within weeks of officially securing their party nomination, I wonder if we'll start to see the conversation around the election turn. As Elliott noted earlier, Trump's speech tonight sounded more like a pivot to the general: Rather than mentioning Haley, he focused on Biden. And with the State of the Union on Thursday, Biden will also have an opportunity to try to focus the nation on his priorities for a potential second term. So it seems like both Trump and Biden have an opportunity to try to start communicating with the nation on their respective visions for the country.

The wildcard, for me, is whether voters are ready to pay attention. If they're not, then the messaging coming from the two candidates might start to turn into a low hum of background noise, essentially taking the edge off of any possible messaging wins as the campaigns beat the same drums for 8 straight months. If voters are ready to tune in, though, we may start to see polls shift in one direction or the other as campaigning begins in earnest.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


Adam Schiff is hoping to effectively end California's Senate race tonight

The biggest downballot race in California is its U.S. Senate contest. Although 27 candidates filed for the race to fill the seat of the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who died last fall — the four leading contenders are Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, plus Republican Steve Garvey, a former Major League Baseball player. The front-runner appears to be Schiff, who is polling at around 25 percent in 538's California primary polling average. This puts him just a bit ahead of Garvey and Porter, who are right around 20 percent for the coveted second spot. Behind them is Lee, who is polling just under 10 percent.

The race has largely centered on Schiff and Porter, both of whom are fundraising powerhouses. As of Feb. 14, Schiff had brought in $29.8 million in net contributions, while Porter had collected $16.7 million, putting them each well ahead of Lee ($4.8 million) and Garvey ($2.1 million). The two leading Democrats also brought over huge sums left over from their House accounts — $21 million for Schiff and $7.4 million for Porter.

In the final weeks, Schiff has tried to use his massive campaign war chest to push Garvey into second place. Schiff has run ads that attack Garvey for his conservative views and past support for Trump, but the spots intend to raise Garvey's profile among Republican voters. By doing that, Schiff could help Garvey consolidate the GOP vote and finish ahead of Porter, relieving Schiff of a demanding general election campaign against the fellow Democrat. A pro-cryptocurrency super PAC may also help Schiff out, after swooping in with $10 million in outside spending seeking to derail Porter.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538