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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Historically Republican Vermont

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


Polls in Vermont did not expect the election to be this close

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


Trump's magic number

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


Early results in Vermont are coming in and Haley might be doing all right there

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


In California, it's the end of the road (or just the beginning)

In several of California's open congressional districts, tonight could be the end of any suspense about who the next representative will be. Or, it could be the start of an eight-month intraparty slog.

That's because California's unique all-party primary system — where the top two primary vote-getters advance to the general election — allows for either a traditional contest between a Democrat and a Republican or a fight between members of the same party in the general election, and it's not always obvious which one you're going to get. That's the case in at least four open-seat races today — three Democratic and one Republican.

In California's 16th District, there are nine Democrats but just two Republicans vying to replace Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo. While limited polling of the district suggests that former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo or Santa Clara Supervisor Joe Simitian, both Democrats, are the front-runners, if one of the two Republicans consolidates most of the GOP vote and the Democratic vote scatters among the many candidates, a Republican could finish in the top two. In the 2022 primary, the Republican candidates didn't meet that threshold, splitting a combined 22 percent of the vote; the four GOP candidates in the state's Senate race won a combined 24 percent in the district. A Republican advancing would ensure that whichever Democrat also finished ahead would win the general election in November, given the district's partisan bent. But if two Democrats finish in the top two, it'll be a real race.

Same goes in the 30th District, where Adam Schiff is leaving to run for Senate. Twelve Democrats and just two Republicans will appear on the ballot there. In the 2022 primary, four GOP House candidates totaled 21 percent, and Senate GOP candidates combined for a smaller 22 percent. Democratic state legislators Anthony Portantino and Laura Friedman, and Democratic former city attorney Mike Feuer are the front-runners for this seat; if two of those three make it to the general election, it will be an expensive and sharp-elbowed race to November, but if one of the Republicans squeezes in, it's basically over.

In the 31st District, where Democrat Grace Napolitano is retiring, six Democrats and two Republicans are running. In 2022, the one Republican running for the seat, Daniel Martinez, advanced to the general by winning 37 percent of the vote in the primary. Former Rep. Gil Cisneros, state Sens. Susan Rubio and Bob Archuleta, former Monrovia Mayor Mary Ann Lutz and attorney Greg Hafif are all running well-funded Democratic campaigns, creating the possibility that Martinez, who is running again, could finish in the top two instead of two Democrats, effectively ending this race tonight.

And in Kevin McCarthy's old seat, the 20th District, it's a similar story with the parties reversed. There, the two Democrats will probably combine for around 30 percent of the primary vote (in 2022, the House candidates combined for 30 percent and the Senate candidates for 32 percent), while six Republicans fight over the remaining 70 percent (a seventh dropped out but remains on the ballot).

Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections