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.


0

Uncommitted votes look pretty similar to Obama’s 2012 reelection bid

Some Democrats have been pushing for voters to choose uncommitted on ballots where it appears, primarily to protest Biden's stance on the conflict in Gaza. However, as of now, it doesn't look like there's much difference between voters choosing uncommitted now versus in Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.

In Massachusetts so far tonight, 10 percent of voters have selected "no preference". That's the same as the percentage of Massachusetts Democratic primary voters that voted no preference in 2012. In North Carolina, Biden is the only name on the ballot, and 11 percent have chosen no preference. But in 2012, when Obama was the only name on the ballot in the state, there were 21 percent that voted no preference.

Other states have even lower uncommitted vote numbers. In Colorado, uncommitted has 7 percent of the vote, and it has 5 percent in Alabama and just 3 percent in Tennessee.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


The more the votes come in, the more education levels predict them

North Carolina now has more than 25 counties reporting most of their vote, so let the analyses begin! As in other primaries this cycle, the percentage of residents with a college degree is a strong predictor of which North Carolina counties are more likely to be supportive of Haley over Trump. That won't surprise folks who have joined us for prior live-blogs this election cycle. In Jones County in the eastern part of the state, a relatively low 16 percent of residents over 25 have completed a four-year degree (compared to an average of 24 percent across all counties in the state), and Trump has amassed a whopping 90 percent of the vote so far. It also looks like Trump does better in counties that are less densely populated, but we'll need to see more results to be sure.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


Tracking an anti-abortion group's candidates

I mentioned this earlier, but I'm tracking candidates endorsed by the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List. So far, the group can claim two likely victories: North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore in North Carolina's 14th District and Rep. Mayra Flores in Texas's 34th District. Buckhout is leading in her race for the 1st District in North Carolina. The only Susan B. Anthony List endorsee we're tracking tonight who is trailing is state Rep. Grey Mills, who's in second place behind Rep. Pat Harrington. Harrington dropped a bid for the 14th District, where he would have faced Moore, to switch to the 10th. The 10th District's incumbent, Patrick McHenry, is not seeking reelection.

—Monica Potts, 538


How well do EMILY's List endorsees do?

In Texas's 32nd District, where ten Democrats were running in today's open primary, state Rep. Julie Johnson is leading with 33 percent of the vote reporting. Johnson has backing from EMILY's List, which was a good sign. According to our analysis of the 2022 primaries, 85 percent of candidates in open primaries endorsed by EMILY's List's won their races.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


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