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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Tied again in Vermont

With 70 percent of the expected vote reporting in Vermont, Trump and Haley are tied again at 48 percent each. If Haley wins there, it might compel her to stay in past tonight, but the overall delegate math is still against her.

—Monica Potts, 538


Book recommendation about U.S. territories

Want to know more about territories like American Samoa, which participate in the nomination process but aren't states — and thus don't have Electoral College votes or representation in Congress? I recommend this fascinating book, "The Not-Quite-States of America" by journalist Doug Mack. It explores the contradictions in the status of these areas and how it affects the people who live there.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor


Biden loses American Samoa to no-name candidate

Well, well, well. It turns out neither Trump nor Biden will sweep every presidential nominating contest this year. ABC News can confirm that Biden has lost the Democratic caucuses in the territory of American Samoa to Jason Palmer.

Who is Jason Palmer, you ask? One of the many no-name candidates who runs for president every year. According to DDHQ’s Derek Willis, Palmer actually visited American Samoa to campaign, which explains how he was able to accomplish something that neither Marianne Williamson nor Dean Phillips has been able to do this year.

P.S. What’s up with American Samoa and Democratic caucuses? You may recall that, back in 2020, it was the only state or territory to vote for Michael Bloomberg.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


Democratic precincts are voting 'No Preference' in North Carolina

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


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