While we like to think of Vermont as the home of Ben & Jerry’s and Bernie Sanders, from a historical perspective, it’s actually among the most Republican states in American history. It voted for every Republican candidate for president from 1856 to 1988 (except for Lyndon Johnson’s landslide in 1964), and former Sen. Pat Leahy was fond of noting that he was the only Democrat the state had ever sent to the Senate. So there’s something poetic about the state asserting itself in a GOP primary tonight.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Polling of the Vermont Republican primary was pretty thin this year, with only one poll released in the last month from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. That survey suggested a fairly easy win for Trump; he was ahead of Haley by 30 percentage points. In addition, 58 percent of likely GOP primary voters in the state said they would be dissatisfied or angry if Haley were to win the nomination, while just 29 percent said the same of Trump.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

Remember, dear reader, the presidential primary is all about the delegates. So far Trump has 276 to Haley's 43. That total is so lopsided that the only real question left is when, not if, Trump will win. The next big primary day is March 12 — let's take a look at what Trump needs to do today in order to clinch the delegate majority of 1,215 on the 12th.

Here's the math: There are 199 delegates up for grabs in contests between March 8 and March 12. Assuming he wins all of those 199 delegates, he would need to win 1,215 - 199 = 1,016 by the time all Super Tuesday ballots are counted. As noted, he's already won 276 of those delegates, meaning he has to pick up 769 delegates more, out of the 865 delegates up for grabs tonight. That's about 89% — which is a little higher than the 87% of delegates he has won from states that have voted so far.

Trump could totally pull that off, in which case we would start calling him the "presumptive nominee" next Tuesday. Otherwise, he will have to wait until March 19, when there are 370 more delegates up for grabs.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

If you feel like sitting on the edge of your seat, like we do, The New York Times Needle is back in action tonight and has Haley ever-so-slightly ahead in Vermont at the moment.

—Monica Potts, 538

On Sunday, Republicans in Washington, D.C., voted for Haley by nearly 30 percentage points in the GOP's party-run primary, giving her all 19 national delegates from the nation's capital. This marked her first victory anywhere in this year’s primary contest, and the first ever primary or caucus victory for a woman in the history of Republican nomination races. Yet the other contests that took place just ahead of Super Tuesday otherwise showcased Trump's strong hold over his party's base. This included victories on Saturday in caucus-convention races in Idaho, Michigan and Missouri, and in North Dakota's Republican caucuses on Monday.

In Michigan, Republicans gathered at Saturday's state party convention to allocate 39 national delegates from the state’s 13 congressional districts (three per district). The voters consisted of precinct delegates mostly elected at the August 2022 state primary as well as Republican elected officials, and they handed Trump all 39 district-level delegates. This result brought Trump's Michigan haul to 51 of the state's 55 delegates, after he had already won 12 of its 16 at-large delegates in the Feb. 27 primary.

The Michigan GOP's split primary-caucus approach came about in part because national Democrats added Michigan to the early part of their presidential primary calendar, prompting the Democratic-controlled state government to shift the state’s primary date into late February. Since the new date violated the national GOP's calendar rules, Michigan Republicans used a workaround whereby the primary results would allocate the state's at-large national delegates, but the state party didn’t formally make the allocation until March, at Saturday’s caucus-convention that also allocated district-level delegates.

Trump also swept caucuses in Idaho and Missouri on Saturday, and then North Dakota on Monday. In Idaho, Trump won 85 percent of caucusgoers, easily surpassing the state's 50 percent winner-take-all threshold to capture all 32 of Idaho's national delegates. In Missouri, Trump won every state- and congressional district convention delegate elected at local caucuses around the state, all but guaranteeing that he will sweep all 51 national delegates when the district and state conventions formally allocate delegates in April and May, respectively. And in a near-repeat of Idaho, Trump won 84 percent of caucusgoers in North Dakota on Monday to claim all 29 of the state’s national delegates.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538