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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Moore wins Alabama's 1st District Republican primary

ABC News projects that Rep. Barry Moore will defeat fellow Rep. Jerry Carl in Alabama's 1st District GOP primary, winning the lone incumbent-versus-incumbent primary we're expecting to have this cycle.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538


One last look at North Carolina

The big races I was eyeing in North Carolina are tightening up. In the 1st District (which is set to be the only competitive Congressional race in the Tar Heel state in November), wealthy businesswoman Laurie Buckhout is projected to win the GOP nomination. The 6th District looks destined for a runoff. In the 8th District, Mark Harris (whose 2018 win was thrown out due to allegations of ballot fraud) is projected to win the Republican nomination. And in the 13th District, Kelly Daughtry, an attorney who came in third in the Republican primary in 2022, is creeping closer to the 30 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Not a ton of surprises, but an interesting night downballot for sure!

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538


What's going on in Katie Porter's district?

The race in California's 47th District is competitive within the Democratic field where, as we've mentioned, Rep. Katie Porter decided to run for Senate, opening up her House seat. The House primary she won in 2018 to face (and eventually defeat) the Republican incumbent, Mimi Walters was also competitive. In fact, Dave Min, who is running today, was the favored Democrat in that 2018 primary, but Porter beat him out to finish second, behind Walters, and went on to win the seat. With 46 percent of the expected vote in, Min is leading his closet rival, Joanna Weiss, by about 8 points.

Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


A political scion advances in Alabama's 2nd District Democratic primary

Redistricting made Alabama's 2nd District Democratic-leaning, and a bevy of candidates jumped into the party primary with a shot at winnable seat. But in Alabama, primary winners must win a majority, so the crowded race has made an April runoff likely. With about 80 percent of the expected vote reporting, former Justice Department official Shomari Figures leads with nearly 44 percent. ABC News has projected that Figures, the son of longtime state Sen. Vivian Figures and the late state Sen. Michael Figures, will advance to the likely runoff. The race of the second runoff spot is not set, but state House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels has 22 percent, ahead of state Rep. Napoleon Bracy's 16 percent. Daniel actually hails from Huntsville in the north of the state, far from the southern Alabama base of the district. Bracy is from Mobile, and there are still some votes left to report from there, so he can't be discounted.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 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