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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Moore wins Alabama's 1st District Republican primary

ABC News projects that Rep. Barry Moore will defeat fellow Rep. Jerry Carl in Alabama's 1st District GOP primary, winning the lone incumbent-versus-incumbent primary we're expecting to have this cycle.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538


One last look at North Carolina

The big races I was eyeing in North Carolina are tightening up. In the 1st District (which is set to be the only competitive Congressional race in the Tar Heel state in November), wealthy businesswoman Laurie Buckhout is projected to win the GOP nomination. The 6th District looks destined for a runoff. In the 8th District, Mark Harris (whose 2018 win was thrown out due to allegations of ballot fraud) is projected to win the Republican nomination. And in the 13th District, Kelly Daughtry, an attorney who came in third in the Republican primary in 2022, is creeping closer to the 30 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Not a ton of surprises, but an interesting night downballot for sure!

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538


What's going on in Katie Porter's district?

The race in California's 47th District is competitive within the Democratic field where, as we've mentioned, Rep. Katie Porter decided to run for Senate, opening up her House seat. The House primary she won in 2018 to face (and eventually defeat) the Republican incumbent, Mimi Walters was also competitive. In fact, Dave Min, who is running today, was the favored Democrat in that 2018 primary, but Porter beat him out to finish second, behind Walters, and went on to win the seat. With 46 percent of the expected vote in, Min is leading his closet rival, Joanna Weiss, by about 8 points.

Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


A political scion advances in Alabama's 2nd District Democratic primary

Redistricting made Alabama's 2nd District Democratic-leaning, and a bevy of candidates jumped into the party primary with a shot at winnable seat. But in Alabama, primary winners must win a majority, so the crowded race has made an April runoff likely. With about 80 percent of the expected vote reporting, former Justice Department official Shomari Figures leads with nearly 44 percent. ABC News has projected that Figures, the son of longtime state Sen. Vivian Figures and the late state Sen. Michael Figures, will advance to the likely runoff. The race of the second runoff spot is not set, but state House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels has 22 percent, ahead of state Rep. Napoleon Bracy's 16 percent. Daniel actually hails from Huntsville in the north of the state, far from the southern Alabama base of the district. Bracy is from Mobile, and there are still some votes left to report from there, so he can't be discounted.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 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