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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Haley's coalition remains strong in Vermont

While the overall result has differed, the Vermont map below showcases a similar trend to Massachusetts. As Nathaniel pointed out, Boston and its well-to-do suburbs leaned towards Haley. In Vermont, Haley's strongest results came in areas just across the New Hampshire border from Dartmouth College and in the stretch of land between Montpelier and Burlington, which benefit economically from those population centers and a few prominent ski resorts.

Amina Brown, 538


VIEWPAC-endorsed candidates in open primaries are having a tough night

In 2022, our analysis showed that just 48 percent of Republican women in open primaries endorsed by VIEWPAC (a PAC dedicated to electing more women) won. As we observed at the time, VIEWPAC was willing to endorse candidates running against Trump endorsees, which was a bold, but losing, strategy in 2022. Tonight, VIEWPAC candidates in open primaries are not having a lot of success. As I already mentioned, in Alabama's 2nd District, Caroleene Dobson trails Dick Brewbaker. And in Texas's 26th District, another endorsee, Luisa del Rosa, a small business owner, is in a distant fourth place behind a Trump endorsee, Brandon Gill, with 88 percent of the expected votes in. (Gill has also been endorsed by Club for Growth.) But in Texas's 34th, the race has been called for their endorsee, Maya Flores ... who is also endorsed by Trump.

Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


Vermont on the razor's edge

Nikki Haley's delegate count from Vermont hinges on whether she clears the 50 percent threshold. And right now, she's incredibly close to it. With 68,420 votes cast, Haley has 34,215, which is 4 more votes than the 50 percent plus 1 she needs to sweep the state's delegates. When I simulate 100,000 primaries with that number of total votes and an even 50-50 split, I get a result that's within that tight margin only 3 percent of the time.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


Trump projected to win California

Polls have closed in California, and ABC News projects that Trump will win the Golden State. He should easily clear 50 percent and claim all of the state's 169 delegates.

—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