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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Adding to what Galen said about primary coverage

I certainly don't mean to blame my hardworking friends in the media. The view from academia is that I organized a whole class around the prospect of an exciting primary, cue the sad trombone noise. I agree with what you said, and also think this is sort of an outgrowth of the weirdness of a primary election. Is it a preliminary election with terrible turnout? A party process, but just a fairly open one? It's hard for all of us in the explaining business because it's honestly kind of a confusing thing.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor


Trump is projected to win Oklahoma

This is not a surprise, but ABC News projects that Trump will win the Republican primary in Oklahoma, based on an analysis of the vote. In the latest polling, he lead by nearly 80 points against Haley.

—Monica Potts, 538


And we have a projected Dem nominee for North Carolina Governor

Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general, is projected to be the Democratic nominee for governor. Stein was a state senator for 7 years before running for attorney general. He has twice beat out Republican candidates, and is the first Jewish person to be elected to statewide office in the state. His race against Robinson for governor will be one of the most closely watched come November, because a Republican win would give the GOP a trifecta for the first time since 2016.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538


Buckhout also has an endorsement from anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List

I'm watching Buckhout for another reason: She has the endorsement of the influential Susan B. Anthony List. The group started out endorsing pro-life women candidates as a kind of counterpart to women-supporting, pro-choice group EMILY'S List, but during the Obama administration also focused on endorsing Republicans against some anti-abortion Democratic women. It was a powerful insider voice against Roe v. Wade, and, since the fall of Roe v. Wade, has called for a national 15-week abortion ban. Democrats will run in November telling voters that the right to abortion nationwide is at stake, and abortion is definitely playing a role in Republican primaries across the country. With 22 percent of the expected vote reporting, Buckhout is currently leading with 56 percent of the vote so far.

—Monica Potts, 538


Downballot races include several judicial shuffles

Voters are choosing more than their parties' presidential nominees tonight. In five Super Tuesday states, they're also deciding on candidates for statewide and local offices. Several consequential judicial elections are being held tonight, for positions on state supreme courts in Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, and on the Criminal Court of Appeals in Texas.

In Arkansas, nonpartisan general elections are being held to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court, creating a game of musical chairs among the sitting justices that could potentially accelerate the already-conservative court's rightward shift. Chief Justice Dan Kemp is stepping down, and three of the four candidates running to replace him are already sitting on the court, while another sitting justice is angling to move to a different open seat on the court. The shuffle could leave two vacancies that would allow conservative Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to name replacements to finish their terms.

Alabama's Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker, who recently made waves nationally with a ruling that frozen embryos used for IVF are children, is also retiring because of the state's mandatory retirement age. Two candidates are running for the Republican nomination to replace him: sitting Associate Justice Sarah Stewart (who had to give up her seat to run for the top slot) and former state Senator Bryan Taylor. While Stewart joined the 8-1 majority opinion in the IVF case and both candidates have defended the decision, Taylor has claimed that Stewart is the "most liberal" justice on the all-Republican court, and received a huge influx of outside spending from conservative anti-abortion group Fair Courts America. Whoever wins will likely face (and defeat) Democrat Greg Griffin>) in the general election.

In Texas, Supreme Court Justice John Devine is facing a primary challenger who has questioned his ethics, but a bigger political feud is playing out in other races. Allies of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton are funding primary challengers to three Criminal Court of Appeals judges who ruled against him in a voter fraud decision, limiting his power to prosecute those cases. And as Nathaniel noted earlier, Paxton, who had been accused of abusing power to protect a political donor, has also endorsed primary challengers against 34 of the 60 Republican legislators who voted to impeach him last year.

—Monica Potts, 538