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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Alabama’s 1st District GOP primary is on a knife’s edge

Turning back to the high-stakes GOP primary in Alabama's 1st District, Moore leads Carl 55 percent to 45 percent, with 87 percent of the expected vote reporting. This undoubtedly makes Moore a favorite to win, but it's not over just yet. That's because 90 percent of the expected remaining votes are in Mobile County, Carl's home base. So far, Carl has carried Mobile 72 percent to 28 percent. That's been extremely helpful to him, but he'll need to win the remaining votes by an even larger margin if he wants to catch Moore: Based on the remaining votes, that same vote share would only get Carl to 48 percent (to Moore's 52 percent).

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538


Taking stock of the presidential race

For those just joining us, here’s the scorecard in the presidential race tonight. Trump has won 12 contests thus far, while Haley has won only one (Vermont). We are still waiting for a winner to be projected in Utah and Alaska.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


Abortion was key for California Senate primary voters

Now that the California Senate race has been projected, and more or less matches what we expected from pre-election polling, Schiff and Garvey will move on to the general election. Voters priorities in the state reflect its Democratic bent, giving us more hints that Schiff is well-positioned for a big lead in the general.

In polling before the primary, voters said abortion was the most important factor for their senate vote. In a late February University of California Berkeley/Los Angeles Times survey, 55 percent of likely California primary voters say that being "a strong voice in defending abortion rights" is very important to their Senate vote, more than any other candidate quality tested. For voters that say they plan to vote for Schiff, Porter or Lee (the top three Democrats in the race), 84 percent say defending abortion is very important, compared to just 15 percent among those who say they plan to vote for Garvey, the leading Republican.

Other top candidate qualities in the survey include being "a strong opponent of Donald Trump" (51 percent say this is very important) and supporting tougher immigration laws (46 percent). Among the top four candidates, Lee supporters were the only group among which a majority (63 percent) said supporting an immediate cease-fire in Gaza is very important, compared to 42 percent of Porter supporters, 33 percent of Schiff supporters and 13 percent of Garvey supporters.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


Checking in on DCCC-endorsed candidates

In a few races, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has endorsed a candidate ahead of the primary — a relatively rare step for the group. Most of those candidates are doing pretty well tonight. In Texas, Michelle Vallejo easily clinched the nomination for the 15th District, which is the only really competitive House seat in the state. In California, most of the DCCC's candidates don't actually have primary challengers, but one, Rudy Salas, is in a tough fight for a spot in the general election. Democrats are anxiously hoping to avoid a lockout in the 22nd District, where Salas is looking for a rematch against Republican David Valadao.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


More Republican women are running, but not many are winning

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