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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Davis probably would have preferred Smith

Smith is an outspoken, MAGA-style firebrand who hasn’t managed to pull out a win in the area and would have been a more appealing (read: weaker) opponent for the freshman congressman in this swingy district. As I mentioned earlier, the 1st District has long been a Democratic stronghold — it hasn’t elected a Republican in over 140 years — but after redistricting, it was redrawn to become a tossup district, and is set to be the only real competitive Congressional race in North Carolina this fall.

Kaleigh Rogers, 538


AP projects a winner in North Carolina's 1st Congressional District

In North Carolina's 1st congressional district, Buckhout is projected to win the Republican primary, according to The New York Times. We wrote about this earlier, but her win comes on the strength of national Republican Party efforts to make her the nominee over two-time candidate in the district, Sandy Smith, a candidate with a more Trumpy profile. Buckhout will take on Democratic Rep. Don Davis in November.

—Monica Potts, 538


Where's Trump doing especially well in North Carolina?

With more than 90 percent of North Carolina's expected vote in, we can now say more about the patterns in that state. First, Trump is romping statewide, with 75 percent to Haley's 23 percent. But where is Trump doing especially well? In counties with few people with college degrees, sure. But also in counties with lower population density and more Black voters. That said, it doesn't mean Trump is doing well with Black GOP voters — preliminary data from the North Carolina exit poll suggest that in fact non-White Republican primary voters were a bit less supportive of Trump than white Republican primary voters. Instead, Trump is doing especially well in the counties with more Black residents (regardless of whether they're voting tonight or not).

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


The establishment candidate may endure in Kay Granger's district

With 81-year-old Rep. Kay Granger set to retire, the primary race to replace her in Texas's 12th District looks like it may go to the more establishment GOP candidate: state Rep. Craig Goldman, who is currently leading with 46 percent and 78 percent of expected votes in. He'll need to get 50 percent of the vote (plus one vote) to avoid a runoff with local businessman John O'Shea, a more Trumpian candidate who currently has 25 percent of the vote.

Kaleigh Rogers, 538


Haley calls on Trump to 'earn' Republicans' votes

Haley took the stage in a bright red dress and in front of a row of American flags just after 10 a.m. from South Carolina, and announced she was suspending her presidential campaign. She began with a retrospective of the start of her campaign, and reiterated her conservative principles, including a low national debt, a small federal government and the need to promote democracy worldwide by standing by America's allies. With that, the final Trump challenger is out of the race, and Trump is the presumptive nominee, a fact Haley acknowledged.

Like most major candidates who ran for the Republican nomination, other than Trump, Haley had previously signed the RNC's pledge to support the eventual nominee, but she's distanced herself from that pledge a bit recently. Haley didn't endorse Trump this morning, but she did congratulate him, while slightly criticizing the way that he's run his campaign. "We must turn away from the darkness of hatred and division," she said. She went on to say that Trump needed to bring people into his cause, saying, "It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the vote of those in our party and beyond it." Haley has noted in previous speeches that she's captured a sizable portion of the vote in some states, even winning Washington, D.C., and Vermont, signaling that some Republican voters are dissatisfied with the former president as a choice for the future.

In the end, as Meredith noted, she made a somewhat rare reference to the historic nature of her campaign. She's the first Republican woman win any state's nominating contest, and she noted that her mother, a first-generation immigrant, had gotten to vote for her for president in South Carolina. She directed her final lines, quoting from the Book of Joshua, to women and girls who had watched her campaign.

—Monica Potts, 538