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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Utah Democrats decide

ABC News projects that Biden will win the Utah Democratic primary. With about 47 percent of the expected vote counted, Biden has 88 percent in the Beehive State.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


Moore leads Carl in all-incumbent clash in Alabama's 1st District

Time for our first update of what's happening in the Republican primary in Alabama's 1st District. There, court-ordered redistricting precipitated an incumbent-versus-incumbent contest between Reps. Barry Moore and Jerry Carl. With nearly half of the expected vote now reporting, Moore leads Carl 57.5 percent to 42.5 percent. Moore's edge might come as a surprise considering Carl outraised Moore and had more outside spending help. Moreover, Carl currently represents more of the new 1st District under the old district lines. But Carl still could catch Moore thanks to his home base of Mobile County, where only 9 percent of the expected vote has reported, with Carl up 74 percent to 26 percent.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538


Jason Palmer’s PR team

I’m sure I’m not the only reporter who’s been receiving emails from Anderson Group Public Affairs, a PR firm flacking for Jason Palmer for several months now. I guess I should have been paying more attention before just sending them to my trash! Also, I think he’s the only candidate working with a PR firm that also sends emails with the subject line “Interview Entrepreneur Behind Billion Dollar Sex Toy Company.”

Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


If you’re furiously Googling Jason Palmer right now …

You’re not alone. He’s currently trending on Twi—I mean X, and his campaign website appears to have crashed.

Kaleigh Rogers, 538


The history of Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday has over 40 years of history that are deeply entwined with a bunch of issues in the presidential nomination process. The term "Super Tuesday" was first used in 1980 but was promoted by Democrats in 1988 as a deliberate effort to give an advantage to more moderate candidates. This was a direct reaction to the idea that the party's 1984 nominee, Walter Mondale, had lost to Ronald Reagan because he was too liberal. This strategy didn't really work out, though, and Democrats ended up nominating another northern liberal, Michael Dukakis.

In other words, this early attempt at a Super Tuesday brought some of the disadvantages of a regional primary, reducing the amount of attention on individual states and pressuring states to move their primaries earlier without really strengthening the influence of the region. Another drawback was that, by trying to enhance Southern influence by holding contests early, Super Tuesday also contributed to the "front-loading" problem", or the issue of having too many delegates selected at the beginning of the primary calendar.

Over time, Super Tuesday has taken on other significance as an important turning point in the race. As party politics scholar Caitlin Jewitt noted, in 2016, everyone thought that Sen. Ted Cruz needed to do well on Super Tuesday, which was heavily concentrated in Southern states where he needed to rack up wins — and when that didn't happen, it was a significant blow to his candidacy. For Biden in 2020, Super Tuesday marked the point when the party consolidated behind him. And in 2008, Super Tuesday made it clear that the Democratic nomination was a real race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as neither one scored a decisive victory.

It's hard to know exactly how this will play out in 2024. Republicans don't have the same ideological history with the big primary day as Democrats do. But the potential for a turning point in the race is there: Because so many delegates are at stake today, unless Haley wins a significant share of them, it may not make sense for her to stay in the race after tonight.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor