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.
Latest headlines:
Downballot, Trump’s endorsees are winning in Texas
As Nathaniel and I discussed earlier, dynamics in the Texas state legislative elections have been particularly contentious this year, with the governor and Trump endorsing at least eight challengers to Republican incumbents in the state House. As of now, seven of those challengers are currently leading their primaries, though a few look headed to a runoff. One challenger, Barry Wernick in the 108th, is trailing by just 2 points.
—Mary Radcliffe, 538
It’s ovah in Minnesota
ABC News projects that Biden will win the Minnesota Democratic primary, and Trump will win the Republican primary. Biden’s win is expected, but also salt in the wound for his highest-profile competitor, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, who gave up a safe seat in Congress and the potential for a strong statewide run in a few years to launch his no-shot challenge against Biden.
—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections
Trump projected to win Massachusetts
ABC News projects that Trump will win the Massachusetts primary, his 10th win of the evening. With 15 percent of the expected vote reporting, Trump is leading Haley in the Bay State 59 percent to 37 percent. Yet again, this is another state where Haley was hoping to do well: Massachusetts has a lot of college graduates, and it allows independents and Democrats to vote in the Republican primary. But with Trump’s win, the Haley campaign turns its lonely eyes to Vermont.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Trump opens up lead in Vermont
With 56 percent of the expected vote now reporting, Trump has opened up a bit of a lead against Haley in Vermont. He has half the vote, and Haley is just behind him with 47 percent. Still, that's closer than the two polls, had us expecting. There's still room for Haley to pull out a win, which she would need: all of the state's 17 primary delegates go to the winner. That is, unless they both end up with under 50 percent of the vote, in which case they split the delegates proportionally.
—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