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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Allred wins the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas

Back to regularly scheduled programming ... Former Tennessee Titans linebacker and current Congressman Colin Allred is projected by ABC News to win the Democratic primary for Senate in Texas.

Allred was the favorite to win the race tonight, but the bigger challenge will be trying to unseat former Canadian and current Senator Ted Cruz this fall. As Dan noted when Cruz locked down his primary earlier tonight, Democrats are hoping that they can finish what Beto O’Rourke started in 2018, when O'Rourke came within spitting distance of flipping Cruz’s Senate seat. If Democrats' are going to flip any Senate seats, this is likely their best shot, and is an important one if they hope to maintain their narrow majority in the upper chamber. So expect to see a lot of eyes and cash on this race in the months to come.

Kaleigh Rogers, 538


Rubio plus Kasich shows the way for Haley in Vermont

As The Washington Post's Lenny Bronner has pointed out, Haley tends to do better in the places where mainstream or moderate Republicans Rubio and Kasich did better in 2016. In Vermont, Trump won the state in 2016, but by just over two percentage points over Kasich. And together, Rubio and Kasich won 49.7 percent of the vote in 2016, meaning that Haley needs to just about equal their joint performance to win the state. So far, she's roughly doing that. Of the 120 towns with nearly all the expected vote in, Haley's share tops Rubio's plus Kasich's in 65 towns while being under it in another 55.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


No polls for Palmer

Unfortunately, we’ve seen no polling at all this cycle that includes Palmer. So there’s no way to tell how he stacks up against Trump.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


Is he even real?

Jason Palmer's (currently down) campaign website features a page called PalmerAI, where a deepfaked video of today's Democratic winner in American Samoa can answer any and all questions you might have about him or his campaign. Talk about uncanny valley.

—Irena Li, 538


GOP primaries for the Texas state House could be a bloodbath

Sitting governors and attorneys general don't usually openly try to defeat incumbents of their own party, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are just built different, I guess. Today's Texas primaries are the culmination of two separate intraparty power struggles from the past year, in which Abbott and Paxton are actively trying to defeat Republicans who have defied them in the state legislature.

In May 2023, the Texas state House impeached Paxton on charges of bribery and abuse of office. He was later acquitted by the state Senate, but he has embarked on a revenge tour against those who supported his impeachment by endorsing primary challengers to 35 incumbent Republicans.

Meanwhile, Abbott suffered a massive political defeat last year when a group of mostly rural Republican legislators blocked his top priority, a school voucher program. In what the Houston Chronicle has called a "legacy-defining" campaign, Abbott has spent more than $4 million trying to oust 10 anti-voucher Republicans running for reelection.

Even Trump has gotten in on the act: He has endorsed at least eight primary challengers to sitting representatives, all of whom either voted against vouchers or voted to impeach Paxton (who is a close Trump ally).

If Paxton, Abbott and Trump are successful, the Republican caucus in the Texas state House will look very different — and further right — next year. Throughout the night, I'll be watching for how many incumbents they successfully topple.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538