As Nathaniel and I discussed earlier, dynamics in the Texas state legislative elections have been particularly contentious this year, with the governor and Trump endorsing at least eight challengers to Republican incumbents in the state House. As of now, seven of those challengers are currently leading their primaries, though a few look headed to a runoff. One challenger, Barry Wernick in the 108th, is trailing by just 2 points.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

ABC News projects that Biden will win the Minnesota Democratic primary, and Trump will win the Republican primary. Biden’s win is expected, but also salt in the wound for his highest-profile competitor, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, who gave up a safe seat in Congress and the potential for a strong statewide run in a few years to launch his no-shot challenge against Biden.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

ABC News projects that Trump will win the Massachusetts primary, his 10th win of the evening. With 15 percent of the expected vote reporting, Trump is leading Haley in the Bay State 59 percent to 37 percent. Yet again, this is another state where Haley was hoping to do well: Massachusetts has a lot of college graduates, and it allows independents and Democrats to vote in the Republican primary. But with Trump’s win, the Haley campaign turns its lonely eyes to Vermont.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

With 56 percent of the expected vote now reporting, Trump has opened up a bit of a lead against Haley in Vermont. He has half the vote, and Haley is just behind him with 47 percent. Still, that's closer than the two polls, had us expecting. There's still room for Haley to pull out a win, which she would need: all of the state's 17 primary delegates go to the winner. That is, unless they both end up with under 50 percent of the vote, in which case they split the delegates proportionally.

—Monica Potts, 538

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