ABC News now projects that Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey, a former Major League Baseball player, will advance in California's U.S. Senate race. This will set up a traditional Democrat-versus-Republican contest in November, which is unlikely to be interesting in deep-blue California. With 41 percent of the estimated vote reporting, Schiff leads Garvey 37 percent to 29 percent. That suggests that Schiff's spending on ads to improve Garvey's name recognition among Republicans succeeded, allowing the congressman to avoid facing fellow Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who is in third with 15 percent. And while we are still waiting for more returns, our map of the top-two Senate primary shows only Schiff and Garvey holding leads in any county that has results, speaking to their edge.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

With all precincts reporting in North Carolina’s 8th congressional district, Baptist minister Mark Harris is winning 30.44 percent of the vote per North Carolina's State Board of Elections, successfully avoiding a runoff and securing his spot on the ballot in the solidly Republican district after ballot fraud allegations kept him out of Congress in 2018.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

I've been keeping half an eye on the race for the chief justice for the state Supreme Court in Arkansas, and the four-way race is very close. With almost all of the expected vote in, two sitting justices, Justice Rhonda Wood and Justice Karen Baker, are virtually tied at about 27 percent each, according to The New York Times. If they remain the top two candidates when all the votes are in, they'll had to a runoff in November. Fun fact: Baker is from my hometown of Clinton, Arkansas.

—Monica Potts, 538

A big question is whether Trump is line to mathematically clinch the nomination next Tuesday, March 12 — the earliest possible date on the calendar that a candidate (namely, Trump) could claim a majority of the GOP's 2,429 national delegates. And it looks like it could be close.

Trump entered the night with 247 delegates to Haley's 43, according to 538's delegate benchmark tracker, and he looks in line to win roughly 775 to 805 delegates out of 854 that were up for grabs today. That would put him at around 1,025 to 1,055 delegates. If he's on the short end of that range, a Trump sweep of all delegates in contests after today up through March 12 would put him just above the 1,215 mark to clinch. This makes the Vermont result, where Haley is just above 50 percent, pretty important, because it would mean the difference between Trump claiming about 0 delegates, or claiming 8 should Haley fall short of a majority in her victory.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

It has become somewhat of a theme of our live blogs this primary calendar to note that Trump's challengers are beating their polls. This first looked to be the case in New Hampshire, where polls significantly underestimate support among Republican likely voters for Haley. But the pattern is more robust than one state: In fact Haley has been beating her polls by an average of five points (in vote share) once you account for undecided voters in these surveys. The consistency of this pattern is striking enough to warrant a post on the matter.

As Mary said earlier, polling primaries is hard! That is betrayed by the fact that POTUS primary polls are by far the least accurate type of poll in 538's pollster rating database going back to 1999. But error is different than bias, and when most of the polls are off in the same direction, something has gone awry.

That "something" is likely the difficulty in obtaining opinions of moderate Republicans from samples of "likely Republican primary voters." Remember that fewer than one percent of people called for a poll actually complete the interview. That means the ones that do are statistical "weirdos" (excuse the technical language). Pollsters adjust for this by weighting their samples to known population benchmarks — like the percent of all adults who are white, over 65, have a college education etc. But in primaries, such benchmarks do not actually exist; pollsters are just making educated guesses about them.

My theory is that most of these primary polls pulling samples of voters from voter registration lists are missing moderate crossover partisans and first-time voters. Additionally, we know that people who are highly motivated to participate in polls (the "weirdos") also happen to be the most politically and ideologically extreme Americans. That's a recipe for polling bias in primaries, where weighting to party, past vote and polarized demographic benchmarks does not control for the partisan consequences of overrepresenting politically engaged Americans.

Now, none of this is to say that polling is "broken." It's just hard to precisely sample a population that doesn't really exist. The polls for the 2024 primary still have below-average error, historically speaking, so we shouldn't go throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But this could nevertheless be a sign of pollsters having a hard time reaching moderate "normie" voters. And if that persists, it could have consequences for general election polls too.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538