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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Texas GOP primary voters thought today’s presidential race could be close

With 24 percent of the expected vote reporting, Trump is leading in Texas by 53 percentage points. Despite Trump's 65-point lead in the polls, likely GOP primary voters in Texas thought the race would be close in pre-election polling. In a February survey from the University of Texas at Tyler, just 17 percent of likely GOP primary voters in the state thought Trump would win by a large margin, while 21 percent thought that Trump would win in a close election. Another 6 percent said they thought Trump would win, but weren't sure of what the margin would be. Most of the rest, 46 percent, said they weren't sure who would win, and just 3 percent thought Haley would win.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


Trump is projected to win Tennessee

ABC News projects that Trump will win the Tennessee Republican primary, his fourth win of the evening (and the night is young). Demographically, Tennessee was one of the best states for Trump, and it hasn't let him down tonight: He's currently leading 81 percent to 16 percent.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


What Trump's edge in Virginia looks like

Trump looks well on his way to a clear victory in Virginia. With 46 percent of the expected vote reporting, he leads Haley 66 percent to 32 percent.

If we look at a map of Virginia's counties and independent cities, we can see how Haley failed to break through. To be competitive, Haley needed to perform well in the state's three major metro areas: Northern Virginia outside of the nation's capital, around the state capital of Richmond and in Hampton Roads, the southeast corner of the state. Yet she's mostly striking out so far.

So far, she only leads in the inner D.C. suburbs (including the state's largest county, Fairfax) and in the city of Richmond proper. She will probably gain as Fairfax reports more, but critically, Trump leads in Loudoun and Prince William counties, the other two big population centers in Northern Virginia. Trump is also ahead around Richmond and leads everywhere in Hampton Roads. And his strength in the rural areas is very strong, much as was the case in the 2016 GOP primary here. Haley holds leads in the city of Roanoke and in the Albemarle County-Charlottesville City area, but it's far from enough to make the race interesting.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538


Biden is projected to win in Vermont and Oklahoma

ABC News also projects that Biden will win in Vermont and Oklahoma, two of the states I'm watching tonight. Biden is a favorite to win across the country, but there is still a Democratic primary tonight.

—Monica Potts, 538


Trump leads in primary polls in virtually every state

If the polls are right, there will be very little drama tonight in presidential races: Trump has massive leads over Haley in virtually every state. For instance, here's what our primary polling averages say in the six states with enough polling to calculate one:

Trump also leads by at least 42 percentage points in the few state-level polls we have this year from Alabama, Maine, Minnesota and Oklahoma. His lead is smaller, though still substantial, in the most recent surveys of Utah (27 points) and Vermont (30 points). Unfortunately, we're flying blind in the last three states; we don't have any polls of Arkansas since last fall, or any polls of Alaska or Colorado, period.

But what if … the polls are wrong? Even in the states where we've calculated averages, there is precious little truly recent polling. The only polls of Super Tuesday states conducted entirely within the last month were four of California, two of Maine, one of Minnesota, two of North Carolina, one of Texas, one of Vermont and one of Virginia. That's not a lot of data to go off.

Plus, primary polls so far this year have overestimated Trump's margin over Haley. This isn't necessarily unusual; since 2000, presidential primary polls have had an average error of 9 points. But the fact that the direction of that error has been consistent so far is … interesting. We usually caution against trying to predict the direction of polling error in advance, but this could — could — indicate that pollsters' likely-voter models for the primary are too weighted toward the Trump wing of the GOP.

As Geoffrey and I wrote yesterday, there are certain states — Colorado, Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia — that seem demographically favorable for Haley. Despite what the polls say, I wouldn't be totally shocked if Haley pulled off a win in one of them. As noted, Colorado hasn't seen any polling this cycle, and Massachusetts hasn't seen any in a month. And while a poll gave Trump a 30-point lead in Vermont a few weeks back, the most recent poll of Virginia put Trump's lead over Haley at just 8 points among likely voters.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538