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.


0

Uncommitted votes look pretty similar to Obama’s 2012 reelection bid

Some Democrats have been pushing for voters to choose uncommitted on ballots where it appears, primarily to protest Biden's stance on the conflict in Gaza. However, as of now, it doesn't look like there's much difference between voters choosing uncommitted now versus in Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.

In Massachusetts so far tonight, 10 percent of voters have selected "no preference". That's the same as the percentage of Massachusetts Democratic primary voters that voted no preference in 2012. In North Carolina, Biden is the only name on the ballot, and 11 percent have chosen no preference. But in 2012, when Obama was the only name on the ballot in the state, there were 21 percent that voted no preference.

Other states have even lower uncommitted vote numbers. In Colorado, uncommitted has 7 percent of the vote, and it has 5 percent in Alabama and just 3 percent in Tennessee.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


The more the votes come in, the more education levels predict them

North Carolina now has more than 25 counties reporting most of their vote, so let the analyses begin! As in other primaries this cycle, the percentage of residents with a college degree is a strong predictor of which North Carolina counties are more likely to be supportive of Haley over Trump. That won't surprise folks who have joined us for prior live-blogs this election cycle. In Jones County in the eastern part of the state, a relatively low 16 percent of residents over 25 have completed a four-year degree (compared to an average of 24 percent across all counties in the state), and Trump has amassed a whopping 90 percent of the vote so far. It also looks like Trump does better in counties that are less densely populated, but we'll need to see more results to be sure.

—Dan Hopkins, 538 contributor


Tracking an anti-abortion group's candidates

I mentioned this earlier, but I'm tracking candidates endorsed by the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List. So far, the group can claim two likely victories: North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore in North Carolina's 14th District and Rep. Mayra Flores in Texas's 34th District. Buckhout is leading in her race for the 1st District in North Carolina. The only Susan B. Anthony List endorsee we're tracking tonight who is trailing is state Rep. Grey Mills, who's in second place behind Rep. Pat Harrington. Harrington dropped a bid for the 14th District, where he would have faced Moore, to switch to the 10th. The 10th District's incumbent, Patrick McHenry, is not seeking reelection.

—Monica Potts, 538


How well do EMILY's List endorsees do?

In Texas's 32nd District, where ten Democrats were running in today's open primary, state Rep. Julie Johnson is leading with 33 percent of the vote reporting. Johnson has backing from EMILY's List, which was a good sign. According to our analysis of the 2022 primaries, 85 percent of candidates in open primaries endorsed by EMILY's List's won their races.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


What’s at stake in the Trump-Haley primary

While we wait for polls to close and results to come in, I'll muse about the bigger picture here. Depending on how things go, this might be the end of Haley's candidacy. But either way, we should think about what's at stake in the contest between her and Trump. Broadly speaking, she has increasingly presented herself as the Trump/MAGA alternative. In some ways, she's made this distinction clear, most recently by suggesting she might not stick with her pledge to support the party nominee, and denouncing his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the rest of her candidacy has been mostly about other stuff — how she'd be more competitive against Biden, and about giving voters a choice in the primary. On one of the main issues that set Trump apart from the rest of the GOP field in 2016, immigration, Haley has also been very conservative, signing one of the toughest state bills when she was governor of South Carolina and adopting Trump's language about toughness at the border. As in 2016, Trump seems poised to soundly defeat his primary rivals. But in terms of the real GOP alternatives to Trumpism, it's definitely not 2016 anymore.

—Julia Azari, 538 contributor