Given that Haley almost certainly wins Vermont (though whether she clears 50% and takes all the delegates is yet to be seen), she may be less likely to drop out of the race. But most Republican primary voters would rather see her move on: according to a February poll by Emerson College Polling, 56 percent of likely Republican primary voters nationwide say that Haley should drop out of the race for the Republican nomination. Thirty-one percent say she should stay in, and 13 percent are not sure.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

In Arkansas, Justice Courtney Hudson won a race for position 2 on the state Supreme Court. She currently holds position 3, but ran for the vacant position 2 because of complicated judicial retirement rules. Her win will leave her current seat vacant, which will give Sanders the opportunity to appoint a replacement for the rest of the term. There is also a 4-way race for the chief justice spot, but if no candidate wins a majority tonight, the top two will head on to a runoff in November.

—Monica Potts, 538

With nearly all expected votes counted in the Republican primary for North Carolina’s 10th District, it’s a tight race between moderate Pat Harrigan, who has 41 percent of the vote, and conservative Grey Mills, who has 39 percent. Whoever wins will be heavily favored to win the general election in this dark-red seat, which is open because Rep. Patrick McHenry is retiring.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

In the Republican primary, attorney Caroleene Dobson is trailing businessman Dick Brewbaker in Alabama’s 2nd district, with 40 percent of the expected vote reporting. This race is an open primary due to redistricting, where eight Republicans are running for the nomination. Dobson had received an endorsement from VIEWPAC, an organization that formed in 1997 to elect more Republican women to office.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor

As the Super Tuesday results come in, there will be a lot of attention to how they compare with the 2016 primaries. In early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump has tended to do better in the places where he did well eight years ago. But we should be careful not to overstate the continuity. While Trump was seen as a relatively moderate Republican back in 2016, he now anchors the conservative end of the political spectrum.

In January 2016, Diana Mutz and I asked a population-based panel of Americans 26 and older whom they supported in the GOP presidential primary. Back then, Trump's best group of GOP primary voters were actually those who called themselves "moderates," while Ted Cruz won respondents who said they were "extremely conservative." Later that year, we asked all respondents to place Trump on a 7-point ideology scale, where "1" meant "extremely liberal" and 7 meant "extremely conservative." Trump scored 5.0, placing him almost exactly at "slightly conservative."

But after Trump had been president for three years and had overseen major tax cuts and an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act — not to mention being the face of a growing contingent of MAGA-inspired conservatives — perceptions of him had changed. In January 2020, our panelists rated him a 5.6, meaning they saw him as closer to "conservative" than to "slightly conservative."

Other data reinforces the idea that perceptions of Trump continued to shift, and that he shed the perception of being a moderate. In April 2021, I teamed up with Hans Noel to ask political activists who was more conservative among pairs of prominent politicians. From those comparisons, we generated perceived ideology scores. By then, Trump was perceived by all respondents to be fairly far on the conservative end of the spectrum, with just ten GOP politicians to his right versus 43 to his left. (The Republicans who were perceived to be on his right are generally seen as Trump allies, such as Sens. Tommy Tuberville, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton.) It's noteworthy that at the time, Nikki Haley was ranked just two slots less conservative than Trump.

Noel and I replicated the analysis in November 2023 in a YouGov survey of American adults. Among Republican survey respondents, Ron DeSantis was thought to be the second most conservative figure, with only Ted Cruz viewed as more conservative. But Trump was also far on the conservative end of the spectrum, ranking fifth out of 23 Republicans on the list. It's no surprise that in that same survey, Trump's best group for the primary was respondents who called themselves "very conservative."

Haley, by contrast, had come to be seen as closer to the center of the GOP — she was viewed as more conservative than Mitch McConnell, Chris Christie and Kevin McCarthy, but also more liberal than fellow primary candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence, and Trump allies like Hawley and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Haley's best group in the November survey was self-described "moderates," although Trump still won that group with 51 percent compared to Haley's 18.

That reflects the fact that DeSantis and Haley cut somewhat different profiles among GOP primary voters. While Haley is the Trump challenger still in the race, DeSantis seems to have been the bigger threat to the conservative base that Trump has come to rely on. And with DeSantis out of the race, Trump has been able to consolidate the GOP's conservative wing, which has increasingly been defined by his politics since 2016.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor