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.


0

A bad trend for Crenshaw

Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw has long had a bit of a fractious relationship with the more extreme members of his party. He was one of just a few Republicans to vote to certify Biden's election in 2020, and he's often feuded with fellow Republican, Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene. Though he's been a reliable vote against the Biden agenda and is backing Trump again, co-hosting a fundraiser for the former president, he's clearly not alright with the base.

With about 73 percent of the vote reporting, he leads his conservative challenger Jameson Ellis by just 17 points. That might seem like a lot, but consider that just two years ago, Crenshaw also faced Ellis in the 2022 GOP primary and defeated him by a much wider 58-point margin.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


Lee holds off challenger in Texas

Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is projected to win the Democratic primary in Texas's 18th District, fending off a challenge from former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards. Jackson Lee lost a bit of steam in her congressional campaign by running for Houston mayor last year, a race she lost. But after jumping back into her reelection bid, she has managed to edge out the young upstart challenger in Edwards, all but guaranteeing her another term in this deep-blue district.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538


Answer: Polls being polls!

I don't doubt that there are parts of the GOP electorate this cycle that are hard to capture, and they may well be Democratic-leaning independents or just straight up Democrats. But equally importantly, we should keep in mind that primary polls are the most prone to error of all the kinds of election polls out there. And actually, outside of Michigan, the polls have been well within the 8 to 10 percentage points of average primary polling error we should expect.

—Galen Druke, 538


Biden, Trump and Cruz projected to win in Texas

ABC News is projecting that Biden and Trump will win their respective presidential primaries in Texas, as will Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who Democrats are angling to unseat this fall. The race for the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas is hot, though as I mentioned earlier, the front-runner is Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player and civil rights attorney who has represented the Dallas area since 2019.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538


The ongoing Republican delegate math

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