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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ABC News projects Biden and Trump will win in Arkansas

Based on an analysis of the vote, ABC News projects that Trump and Biden will win their presidential primaries in Arkansas. With about 7 percent of the expected vote in, Womack is holding onto his lead in the 3rd Congressional District 60 percent to 40 percent against Penzo.

—Monica Potts, 538


Answer: Democrats!

I'll be very interested to see, when the dust settles tonight, if the polls are more on the money in states with closed primaries, where bored (or wily) Democrats can't vote in the Republican Party primary for Haley. A lot of the exit polling data we've seen on Haley supporters and who they'll vote for in the general election, or whether they approve of Biden's job performance, makes me wonder how many of her voters are just plain old Democrats who are getting screened out of a lot of GOP primary polling. But we'd see a difference in closed primary states (to the extent we have robust polling there to make the comparison)!

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


Answer: Polls might be struggling to pick up some more Democratic-leaning voters

Julia, I'm suspicious that the reason Trump's lead in primary polling has been somewhat exaggerated is that pollsters are not necessarily capturing some of the independents who are showing up to vote in a GOP primary. As Nate Cohn recently pointed out in The New York Times, some pollsters have filtered for likely GOP primary voters by mostly or only looking at voters who've voted in Republican primaries. But a fair number of independents, including Democratic-leaning ones, wouldn't necessarily fall in that category. But with Biden a lock to win the Democratic nomination — barring something happening outside of the voting booth — Democratic-leaning voters have only one race to get involved in. Although we know there aren't that many "cross-over" voters who participate in the opposing party's primary, some high-propensity Democratic voters and some Democratic-leaning independents have probably voted in states that allow non-Republicans to cast ballots in the GOP primary.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538


Answer: The 'silent voters' aren't so silent, anymore

In 2016, people who said they were undecided in polls were more likely to vote for Trump as "professor polls" explains in this great 538 video I show my students. But in 2024, Trump supporters aren't so shy. It's the rest of the GOP that might be more bashful.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


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