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


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