In the early primaries and caucuses on the GOP side, a few patterns became clear. Donald Trump marched toward the nomination by winning most groups of Republican primary voters, but Haley proved a bit more competitive in pockets with large numbers of college-educated voters. Trump has expanded his 2016 coalition by winning more voters on the right, which we can see by his strength in places where Ted Cruz did well eight years ago. Haley, meanwhile, competes among moderates. Tonight, that meant dominant wins for Trump across a set of states, from Virginia and North Carolina to Texas and California. Among tonight's states, Virginia's demographics make it more friendly to non-Trump candidates — Rubio almost won it in 2016 — so Haley's failure to breech 40 percent there is yet another sign that she's able to win only a minority faction within today's GOP.

Overall, there isn't much surprise in tonight's Republican presidential results, beyond the question of whether Haley will eke across the 50 percent threshold and so take home all of Vermont's delegates. In part, that reflects the nationalization of presidential politics. In state after state, the same kinds of communities lean towards or away from Trump, so the results follow pretty consistently from a state's demographics and prior voting behavior. That makes for predictable patterns — and a less than surprising Super Tuesday.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor

Thinking about what Kaleigh said, the fact that Trump and Biden have their primary races all but sewn up does make for some blah primary election nights. That's why all the attention shifted to Vermont, which Haley is likely to win, and to American Samoa on the Democratic side, where we all learned that someone named Jason Palmer had been running all along. I'm like Mary and ready to turn to the general election, when we can focus on how Biden and Trump are appealing to voters and what the consequences of their stances and potential victory might be.

—Monica Potts, 538

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

As we discussed earlier, using presidential primary results to read the tea leaves of the general election seems to be a particularly fraught exercise. The dynamics (and electorates) of the two types of contests are wildly different, and several of my colleagues pointed out a variety of ways in which this type of analysis could go awry.

But now that Biden and Trump are both within weeks of officially securing their party nomination, I wonder if we'll start to see the conversation around the election turn. As Elliott noted earlier, Trump's speech tonight sounded more like a pivot to the general: Rather than mentioning Haley, he focused on Biden. And with the State of the Union on Thursday, Biden will also have an opportunity to try to focus the nation on his priorities for a potential second term. So it seems like both Trump and Biden have an opportunity to try to start communicating with the nation on their respective visions for the country.

The wildcard, for me, is whether voters are ready to pay attention. If they're not, then the messaging coming from the two candidates might start to turn into a low hum of background noise, essentially taking the edge off of any possible messaging wins as the campaigns beat the same drums for 8 straight months. If voters are ready to tune in, though, we may start to see polls shift in one direction or the other as campaigning begins in earnest.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

Since about the mid-1990s, Democrats have been electing more women to Congress than Republicans, and the difference grows bigger each cycle. This has a lot to do with the supply of candidates — more women identify as Democrats, and the women in the pool of traditionally "qualified" candidates (college-educated, in white-collar professions) are likely to lean Democratic. There's also the issue of demand — Democrats are more than twice as likely (75 percent to 29 percent) than Republicans to agree that there are too few women in politics.

These supply and demand issues may be mitigated if the Republican Party's organizational arm and donor class actively recruited, endorsed and financially backed women in primaries for competitive, or safe, red seats in November. This is the playbook Democratic PAC EMILY's List has been working from for years to elect more Democratic women to Congress and governorships. According to academic researchers, Democratic groups designated to elect more women are more likely to be prioritized by their donors than their Republican counterparts, which helps explain their success.

Although the GOP doesn't have a heavyweight equivalent to EMILY's List (which spends millions each cycle), there are groups committed to electing more Republican women to Congress. A couple of prominent new groups (Winning for Women and Elevate PAC) cropped up after the 2018 election, which elected 42 new women to Congress, but only four that were Republican. As a result, in both the 2020 and 2022 cycles, more Republican women ran in primaries than ever before, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

But more women running doesn't always translate into more women winning. As we wrote ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, more Democratic than Republican women were nominated to run that year in House and Senate races where their party was either competitive or favored to win. While the GOP may have run and endorsed more women in primaries, it didn't emulate Democrats' strategy of actively recruiting women to run in races where they could win in November.

Today, there are just a few non-incumbent Republican women competitive for nominations in races they'd have any shot of winning in November. In Alabama's 2nd District, an incumbent-less primary due to redistricting, four of the eight Republicans running for the nomination are women. Of those women, attorney Caroleene Dobson has been endorsed by the women-focused VIEW PAC. Neither Trump nor the party committee has endorsed any candidate in that primary, but Dobson faces tough odds winning the crowded primary, and even tougher odds in a general expected to heavily favor Democrats.

11 Republicans are competing in Texas's 26th District, another race with no incumbent. Of two women in the race, Luisa del Rosal, a small business owner and former congressional chief of staff, has been endorsed by VIEW PAC. But she will have to defeat Trump endorsee Brandon Gill (who's also endorsed by the Club for Growth). The Republican woman running today with the most likely path to victory is former Rep. Mayra Flores: she's running to reclaim Texas's 34th District, the seat she won in a 2022 special election but lost in the general election later that year. She is endorsed by both Trump and VIEW PAC, which bodes well for her to face Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez in a competitive general.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor