Trump and Biden prepare for rematch as Haley bows out of GOP race

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for debates with President Joe Biden hours after Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign. 

Trump, who did not participate in any GOP primary debates, has previously said he wanted to debate Biden in the general election. 

“It is important, for the Good of our Country, that Joe Biden and I Debate Issues that are so vital to America, and the American People. Therefore, I am calling for Debates, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE! The Debates can be run by the Corrupt DNC, or their Subsidiary, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). I look forward to receiving a response. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump posted on Truth Social. 

Biden’s campaign responded, saying it’s a conversation they will have “at the appropriate time” and urged the former president to watch Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

“I know Donald Trump’s thirsty for attention and struggling to expand his appeal beyond the MAGA base – and that’s a conversation we’ll have at the appropriate time in this cycle,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement.

This post has been updated with the Biden campaign’s response.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are leading in delegates as they become their party’s likely nominees, setting up a rematch in November.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced Wednesday she is suspending her presidential campaign following a series of losses on Super Tuesday.

Here’s the latest CNN delegate estimate:

On the Republican side: 

Delegates won on Super Tuesday: 

24 Republican delegates from Super Tuesday contests are still to be allocated.

A total of 1,215 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination. Here’s how many GOP delegates have been won to date: 

On the Democratic side: 

Delegates won on Super Tuesday: 

25 Democratic delegates from the Super Tuesday contests are still to be allocated.

A total of 1,968 pledged delegates are required to win the Democratic nomination. Here’s how many Democratic delegates have been won to date:

Arizona Democrats are facing a dilemma in Pima County. Home to Tucson, the blue county boasts a deep well of Democratic voters, but many with deep uncertainty about President Joe Biden’s age and his administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Read more about that here.

But state and county Democrats say they have a strategy to target these unenthused voters: Focus on local and state issues to drive up turnout and reap the benefits at the top of the ticket.

Advocates are gathering signatures to place a state constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights on the November ballot. They’re hoping to replicate the success of similar efforts across the country since the fall of Roe v. Wade by turning out Democrats, independents and even some supportive Republicans.

“A lot of people have been extremely shocked to see women’s rights reversed after all of these years,” said Corinne Cooper, who has been volunteering since September to get Arizonans to sign the petition.

Democrats here point to competitive US Senate and House races as a draw for centrist and progressive voters alike, along with the possibility that the party could flip both chambers of the state Legislature – a duopoly they haven’t enjoyed since 1966.

“When people realize that voting rights, women’s rights, public schools, all these things are settled at the state Legislature, the light bulb goes on,” said John McClean, a Democratic state Senate candidate. “These are issues important to their everyday lives.”

Democrats are also counting on another factor: fear about what a second Trump presidency would look like. Becky Richards, a 37-year-old Realtor, moved to Arizona from much more Democratic Illinois a few years ago.

“It’s terrifying to see that Trump is basically doing nothing, and still gaining momentum,” she said. “In Arizona, that scares me, in a way, because I see the Trump flags and the MAGA hats and things as you drive through the state.”

If it comes down to a rematch between Biden and Trump, Richards said that despite her hope for a younger candidate, she’ll vote for Biden “no question.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell defended his endorsement of former President Donald Trump as the GOP presidential nominee, despite Trump’s barrage of attacks against him and his wife and McConnell’s harsh criticism of the former president after the January 6 insurrection. 

“February 25th, 2021, shortly after the attack on the Capitol, I was asked a similar question, and I said I would support the nominee for president even if it were the former president,” he told CNN.
Pressed again, he said, “I don’t have anything to add to what I just said. I said in February of 2021, shortly after the attack on the Capitol, that I would support President Trump if he were the nominee of our party, and he obviously is going to be the nominee of our party.”

Earlier Wednesday, Trump thanked McConnell for the endorsement. The pair have had a rocky relationship over the past few years, but Trump says he’s willing to work with him.

“Thank you, Mitch,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I look forward to working with you and a Republican Senate MAJORITY to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

President Joe Biden has a problem where he can least afford it: with Democratic voters in Pima County, Arizona. The county, home to Tucson, boasts a deep well of Democratic voters, but many with deep uncertainty about the president’s age and his administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

Just how critical is Pima County? Biden won Arizona in 2020 by about 10,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast. He bested Trump by nearly 100,000 votes in Pima County. He’ll need every one of those votes, and maybe more, if he hopes to keep Arizona — and his job — come November.

Tucson business owner Jenna Majchrzak, a self-described “reluctant Democrat,” sums up the expected November choice between Biden and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump this way: “It’s hard to vote for someone with multiple felony charges,” she says, “and it’s also very hard to vote for someone that is pro-genocide.”

It’s an opinion shared by many Democratic voters whom CNN talked to in this diverse county of just over a million residents, with Mexico on its southern border and the Tohono O’odham Nation to the west.

Grady Campbell, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Arizona, is looking forward to voting in his first presidential election. But — and it’s a big one — he’s so put off by the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s offensive in Gaza that he’s voting for Marianne Williamson in the March 19 Democratic primary.  

“I think that just by voting against him in the primary, we can send a message to hopefully help him change his viewpoints a little bit more progressively into the general election,” Campbell said.

Another concern for some Pima County Democrats: Biden’s age. 

“It’s not even so much even the mental acuity as it is just kind of being out of touch,” Amanda Bruno, 31, said of the 81-year-old president. “I’d love to see somebody a little bit younger, who’s whose impact will be felt by their generation.”

How are state and county Democrats responding to the challenge of unenthused voters? Read more about that here.

The White House implied that President Joe Biden still does not want to see former President Donald Trump receive classified intelligence briefings — even as Trump is set to officially become the Republican nominee for president. 

“I think the president’s words stand today,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. “I don’t think his mind has changed on that.” 

It’s tradition for past presidents to be allowed to request and receive intelligence briefings. In 2021, Biden said he didn’t believe Trump should receive the briefings due to his “erratic behavior unrelated to the insurrection.” 

“I’d rather not speculate out loud,” Biden previously said when asked what he fears could happen if Trump continued to receive the briefings. “I just think that there is no need for him to have the — the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

Asked if Biden would do anything to try to block Trump from receiving the briefings, Jean-Pierre declined to answer on Wednesday.

“I don’t have anything to add,” she said, “but the president was very clear about how he felt about that, and I would say those comments certainly do stand today.” 

The nominees of the two major parties have received classified intelligence briefings from top government officials for more than 60 years, a decision aimed at facilitating a smooth transition from candidate to commander in chief.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on April 25 in the blockbuster case dealing with whether former President Donald Trump may claim immunity from prosecution in the federal election subversion case.

The court previously said it would hear arguments in the case during the week of April 22. On Wednesday, it announced that it would hear the case during a rare Thursday session.

The timing of the case has drawn considerable scrutiny as it could help determine whether Trump faces trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election before the November 2024 election. 

Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the criminal charges, has sought to speed up the proceedings over Trump’s immunity claim so that he can bring the matter to trial as quickly as possible.

An original trial date that had been set for early March already has been postponed.

Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips is ending his long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Joe Biden.

The Democrat announced his decision in a post on X and endorsed President Joe Biden, saying it is “clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be.”

He thanked his supporters, and urged them to do everything they can “to help keep a man of decency and integrity in the White House. That’s Joe Biden.”

Donald Trump has put America on notice – his second term would be even more disruptive and turbulent than his first.

The new presumptive Republican nominee booked his place in a general election rematch with President Joe Biden when his distant, last-remaining rival Nikki Haley conceded to reality and suspended her campaign on Wednesday.

The triumph of the once and possibly future president – an incredible comeback given his attempt to steal the 2020 election and a crush of criminal and civil trials threatening his liberty and fortune – sets up one of the most fateful elections in American history. His demonstrated record of contempt for democratic institutions means that the country’s political, legal and constitutional guardrails are facing a severe new test from a GOP candidate who could be a convicted felon by Election Day and who may see restored executive power as a tool to thwart federal prosecutions.

And Trump’s return to the threshold of the presidency will send shockwaves around a world still recovering from his volatile leadership and affinity for autocrats and send a warning to Ukraine, a nation fighting for its survival.

The reason Trump is so different from a traditional candidate is that he’s not campaigning as a fresh new voice pulsating with optimism for the future or brimming with policy ideas to bring the nation together. He’s portraying America as a dystopian, failed state overwhelmed by lawlessness, urban blight and slipping toward World War III abroad. In a classic trope of dictators, he’s promising to flush out enemies within, vowing revenge on political foes and posing as a strongman while conflating his own personal, political interests with the nation’s.

Read Collinson’s full analysis on Trump here.

Nikki Haley’s lone House Republican supporter, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, is urging her to help unite the party after she announced she will withdraw from the presidential race, telling CNN that he is speaking with former President Donald Trump later today. 

“It’s time to unite. I’ll be supporting President Trump 100%. We got a country (to) save,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju. 

When asked if he thinks Haley should do more to urge her supporters to get behind Trump, Norman said, “We’ll see. I hope she will. I mean, I hope she’ll 100% get behind him. I mean, what’s the other option?”

Norman, who did not speak to Haley this morning, said he hopes that she will ultimately support Trump. 

“We’ll see. Hopefully she will,” he said, adding: “It’s not about Democrat and Republican, it’s about getting this country back on track.” 

Norman added that Haley “did a good job” in her campaign, “but the people chose Donald Trump. That’s a good thing that it played out like this.” 

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has emerged from the presidential primary like few losing candidates manage to do – in a far more elevated position than when announcing her candidacy a year ago.

Haley, whose political career spans from the Tea Party to the Trump era, offered a warning about the isolationist movement that is growing inside the Republican Party. 

“Our world is on fire because of America’s retreat,” Haley said Wednesday as she announced the suspension of her campaign. “Standing by our allies in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a moral imperative. But it’s also more than that. If we retreat further, there will be more war, not less.”

The question of Haley’s next steps will be answered in the months and years to come. But it speaks to a far larger question about whether her views are the future – or the past – of the GOP.

Some congressional Republicans are putting aside concerns over former President Donald Trump as the party’s nominee and uniting around him following a dominant Super Tuesday showing that led to his last primary challenger dropping out. 

Senate GOP Whip John Thune, who has been vocal in the past about his concerns over how Trump will fare with suburban voters, told CNN that he believes the Republican ticket will deliver a unified message. 

“We’ll all go out and all help aggressively win those people in suburban areas (and) independent voters. It’s now a … straight up one-on-one,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju. 

And Rep. John Duarte, a California Republican who represents a district President Joe Biden won last cycle, told CNN that he’s focused on who he is running against and that he plans to endorse Trump. 

“I think Biden’s the opponent and that’s good for me. It’s easy to run against Joe Biden these days, and that’s what we’ll be doing,” he told Raju when asked if Trump at the top of the ticket could have implications for tough races down-ballot. 

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who also represents a Biden-won Pennsylvania district, declined to say whether he would be endorsing Trump. 

As President Joe Biden’s advisers look for ways to appeal to Nikki Haley supporters, one area of potential overlap is emerging: foreign policy and world affairs.

It’s not an issue traditionally at the center of presidential elections, which usually revolve around domestic matters and the economy. But for the president and his team, America’s role in the world has become a key point of contrast with Donald Trump – fertile ground, they believe, for picking off disillusioned Republicans.

In his statement making a direct appeal to bring Haley’s voters into the fold, Biden made specific mention of her attempts to call out Donald Trump for “cowering before Vladimir Putin” and for her support of NATO.

Likewise, in her speech announcing the suspension of her campaign, Haley spent time during the brief remarks describing the “moral imperative” of standing with traditional American allies like Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

To be sure, she wasn’t endorsing Biden’s approach — she said “our world is on fire because of America’s retreat.” But in voicing support for longstanding American alliances and a muscular role abroad, she found herself more aligned with Biden than with Trump, who has questioned NATO’s role and said he would encourage Russia to invade NATO members who don’t meet defense spending targets.

There is little expectation among Biden’s team that world affairs will drive many votes in November, but in the abstract, they think issues like the war in Ukraine and support for NATO provide a clear point of contrast with Trump. It’s also an issue they believe will resonate with donors – potentially those who contributed to Haley’s campaign – as they look to peel off support.

However, even as he looks to appeal to her supporters on foreign policy, he faces discontent within his own party for his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza – an indication that the issue will remain a political flashpoint going forward.

Nikki Haley’s campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas described the statements from President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Haley’s exit from the race as “a tale of two statements.”

Biden’s statement said there is a place for Haley voters in his campaign. In contrast, Trump invited Haley supporters to join him while saying the former South Carolina governor was “trounced” on Super Tuesday and that most of her donations came from Democrats.

The Trump campaign blasted out a fundraising text to supporters on Wednesday shortly after former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced she was suspending her campaign, telling them, “It was a hard-fought race, but now it’s time for us to unite as a party and defeat Joe Biden!” 

“Nikki Haley ends her campaign!” the appeal read in all caps. “If we’re going to win back the White House, it will be all because of what you do right here, right now.” 

The text said former President Donald Trump is calling on one million supporters to donate following the news.

The Republican National Committee formally acknowledged former President Trump as the 2024 presumptive Republican nominee for president on Wednesday, shortly after former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley officially dropped out of the Republican primary. 

“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump on his huge primary victory!” RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in the statement. “I’d also like to congratulate Nikki Haley for running a hard-fought campaign and becoming the first woman to win a Republican presidential contest.” 

The statement comes just days before an expected leadership change at the RNC where McDaniel is likely to step down from her post and Michael Whatley, the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, is expected to succeed her. Trump had endorsed Whatley to lead the RNC and has also said he would install key lieutenants at the organization once he became the presumptive nominee. 

Once a party has a presumptive or formal nominee that party’s national committee normally melds closely with the nominee’s campaign. In this case, the RNC is set to align closely with the Trump campaign going forward.  

Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday shot down speculation that he may provide financial support to former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

The public declaration comes after the New York Times reported this week that Musk met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in recent days. CNN confirmed the meeting with Musk, one of several Trump held with donors in Palm Beach last weekend as he seeks to raise more money for his financially strained campaign.

This isn’t the first time this cycle Musk has flirted with supporting a presidential candidate only to pull back. Musk once praised Ron DeSantis’ White House bid and infamously hosted the Florida governor’s glitchy presidential campaign launch on X. However, Musk ultimately backed away from DeSantis.

President Joe Biden made a clear appeal to Nikki Haley’s supporters in the aftermath of her exit from the race, praising her “courage” in standing up to former President Donald Trump. 

“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,” Biden said in a statement moments after Haley suspended her campaign. 

Biden heralded Haley for her role in her party: “It takes a lot of courage to run for President – that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump. Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin.”

The Biden campaign is setting out to earn the votes of moderate Republican voters turned off by Trump. Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said Wednesday there is a “home” for Haley voters with the Biden team in the moments before Haley ended her candidacy. 

Haley voters “agreed with Nikki Haley when she stood up to Trump for the chaos, the division, the extremism that he represents,” Tyler told CNN’s John Berman Wednesday morning. Haley voters, he added, “rejected MAGA extremism” in 2020 and 2022, and “are now rejecting Donald Trump and MAGA extremism moving forward.”

Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign this morning, ending a costly fight for the Republican nomination that drew a total of over $303 million in ad spending from the combined field of GOP candidates and outside groups, and saw the top candidates devote tens of millions to attacking each other.

Haley’s network spent about $82 million on ads, with about $17.9 million coming from her campaign and $64.4 million from SFA Fund, the lead super PAC supporting her bid. In addition, Americans For Prosperity Action, the Koch-aligned super PAC backing Haley, spent about $8 million on ads supporting Haley.

Overall, comparing the lead candidates and their main allied PACs, Haley’s network spent the most on ads in the GOP presidential primary, about $82.3 million. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his super PACs spent the second most, about $60.4 million, while former President Donald Trump and his PACs spent the third most, about $60.8 million. 

According to the Haley campaign’s most recent fundraising reports and public statements, it likely ended with some untapped resources. Haley’s campaign reported nearly $13 million in cash on hand as of the end of 2023, and had recently announced it raised $12 million in the month of February.

As Nikki Haley suspended her campaign Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump posted on social media that the former South Carolina governor got “trounced” on Super Tuesday and invited her supporters to join his political movement. 

“Nikki Haley got trounced last night, in record setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican Primaries. Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50%, according to the polls,” Trump posted.

He continued, “At this point, I hope she stays in the “race” and fights it out until the end! I’d like to thank my family, friends, and the Great Republican Party for helping me to produce, by far, the most successful Super Tuesday in history, and would further like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”

Reminder: Vermont does not have party registration. All voters can choose which primary to vote in.

Nikki Haley congratulated former President Donald Trump during her announcement ending her presidential campaign but stopped short of endorsing him.

“In all likelihood, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America’s president. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us,” Haley said.

Haley added, “it is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that.”

Nikki Haley formally announced she is ending her presidential campaign.

“I am filled with gratitude for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all across our great country. But the time has now come to suspend my campaign. I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets,” she said Wednesday in South Carolina.

She warned Americans about the plethora of problems that lie ahead, saying, “the world is on fire.” The former South Carolina governor emphasized some of the issues she ran on: the threat of national debt to the American economy, the need for small government and the importance of standing by Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel.

Haley also congratulated Donald Trump who, she said, is going to be the likely presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the vote those in our party and beyond it, who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” she added.

Reflecting back on her campaign, she remarked that her mother, “a first-generation immigrant, got to vote for her daughter for president — only in America.”

Nikki Haley, who is expected to exit the presidential race, is speaking from Charleston, South Carolina, where she is poised to renew her call for a return to conservative principles and warn against an isolationist foreign policy that has taken hold inside the Republican Party, an adviser said.

She is expected to mention Trump, the adviser said, but will not offer an endorsement.

Hillary Clinton downplayed concerns about President Joe Biden’s age on Wednesday amid persistent polling reflecting Democratic anxiety on the issue in notable comments, making the case to her followers that Biden and former President Donald Trump are “effectively the same age.” 

“When you’re lucky to live into your seventies or eighties, the difference of a few years doesn’t matter all that much. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are effectively the same age. Let’s use that as a baseline,” Clinton said in an Instagram post.

The morning after Trump swept a slate of states on Super Tuesday, Clinton echoed the Biden campaign, which has widely viewed this week as a crystallizing moment in the rematch between Trump and Biden. 

Trump, Clinton said, “tried to overthrow our democracy, has been indicted 91 times, and says he wants to be a ‘day one’ dictator if elected again. I’m choosing Biden. How about you?”

Top officials on Nikki Haley’s campaign told major donors in recent weeks that Super Tuesday would dictate whether or not Haley stayed in the race, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

They made a persuasive case in these private conversations: Staying in the race through Super Tuesday would give Haley’s team more data about the GOP electorate, the sources said. Haley’s team wanted that data before making the call to suspend her campaign, instead of pulling the plug after only a few states had voted. 

As a result, most donors are not surprised by Nikki Haley’s move to drop out today, particularly because they didn’t expect the outcome in the Super Tuesday states to be better than Haley’s performance in the other early states. 

Haley herself engaged in outreach to some top donors very late last night, one source said. Members of Haley’s team also made outreach to top donors, sources added. It is too early to tell where the donors go from here, they said.

The Donald Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA, Inc., congratulated the former president after news broke that his lone GOP rival, Nikki Haley, would soon announce she plans to drop out of the race.

“Congratulations to President Donald Trump for vanquishing his opponents in record time. The same movement that powered President Trump to a primary victory will power him to a general election victory. Voters are eager to have the prosperity and safety of the Trump presidency restored,” Taylor Budowich, CEO of Make America Great Again Inc.

Haley will announce that she is withdrawing from the Republican presidential race today, according to sources familiar with her plans. She is speaking in Charleston, South Carolina, at 10 a.m. ET.  

Nikki Haley reached the decision to suspend her presidential campaign late Tuesday, an adviser said, but did not share her plans outside of an extraordinarily tight circle of senior aides that guided her candidacy.

Even as her team watched a victory in Vermont and a strong showing in the Virginia suburbs on Super Tuesday, “the benchmark for staying in the race was not reached,” an adviser said. Going into the biggest day of voting, the adviser said, Haley’s team had set a loose threshold of winning about 40% of the vote in several states to credibly stay in the race.

What she’s expected to say today: Haley will speak from Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday, where she is poised to renew her call for a return to conservative principles and warn against an isolationist foreign policy that has taken hold inside the Republican Party, the adviser said. She is expected to mention Trump, the adviser said, but will not offer an endorsement.

Nikki Haley will not announce today that she is endorsing former President Donald Trump, sources familiar with her plans tell CNN.

Instead, Haley will call on Trump to earn the support of voters who backed her. That plan appears to leave the room for her to endorse Trump ahead of the general election in November.

Haley will announce that she is withdrawing from the Republican presidential race today according to sources familiar with her plans. She is speaking in Charleston, South Carolina, at 10 a.m. ET.  

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will announce Wednesday that she is exiting the Republican presidential race, according to sources familiar with her plans, clearing the path for former President Donald Trump.

Haley had emerged as former President Donald Trump’s sole rival in the Republican presidential primary campaign, and while he rolled to victory in 14 of the 15 GOP contests on Super Tuesday, she foiled a possible clean sweep by winning in Vermont.

Across the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday, Haley won just 43 of the Republican delegates while Trump won 764.

Ahead of the South Carolina primary in February, Haley vowed to stay in the race through to Super Tuesday on March 5, saying she would continue to compete in the primary “until the last person votes, because I believe in a better America and a brighter future for our kids.”

Haley, who was Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations, was the last of a dozen major candidates the former president vanquished in a GOP primary that he dominated from start to finish, even as he skipped the party’s debates and maintained a much lighter schedule of early-state travel than all of his rivals.

Haley is expected to deliver remarks in Charleston, South Carolina at 10 a.m. ET.

President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is making the case for why Donald Trump is “a wounded, dangerous, and unpopular candidate” despite the former president’s near sweep on Super Tuesday, declaring in a new memo:

“We have a clear path to victory.”

The memo, signed by Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said Nikki Haley’s resilience in the GOP primary to date is clear evidence that Trump faces a hard ceiling in terms of support from traditionally GOP voters.

“A significant share of moderate and Haley voters across the country are saying that Trump cannot count on their votes in a general election,” the memo says. 

O’Malley Dillon and Chavez Rodriguez said in the memo that as the general election ramps up, those are precisely the voters that the Biden campaign will “aggressively engage.”

The memo also downplays a slew of concerning poll numbers for the incumbent president.

A new poll from the New York Times over the weekend found Biden trailing Trump, 48%-43%, but also found 10% were undecided—a figure the campaign says shows promise for Biden.

The November election, the memo says, “will be a very close general election contest like all modern presidential elections are… but, we have a clear path to victory.” 

Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump picked up a large number of delegates in their dominating wins on Super Tuesday.

More than a dozen states held primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, the biggest day of the nominating races so far as the 2024 presidential campaign accelerates.

Trump’s GOP rival Nikki Haley also picked up some delegates, winning the Vermont GOP presidential primary, but she remains far behind Trump. Meanwhile, in American Samoa — where 91 votes were cast in the Democratic caucuses — Biden lost to Democratic candidate Jason Palmer.

Here’s the latest estimate of delegates won on Super Tuesday:

Republicans:

47 delegates from tonight’s contests are still to be allocated.

Democrats:

43 delegates from tonight’s contests are still to be allocated.

These are the estimated delegates won to date:

Republicans:

Democrats:

Remember: It takes 1,215 of 2,429 delegates to win the Republican nomination and 1,968 of 3,934 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

This post has been updated with the latest delegate estimates.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump took big steps toward making their seemingly inevitable rematch official, as both notched huge Super Tuesday wins.

More than a dozen states held primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, the biggest day of the nominating races so far as the 2024 presidential campaign accelerates and leaves the one-by-one march through early-voting states behind.

Both Biden and Trump saw familiar signs of potential general election weaknesses: progressives casting ballots for “uncommitted” rather than Biden, college-educated suburbanites choosing Haley over Trump.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Read all of the Super Tuesday takeaways, including signs of potential weaknesses for Trump and Biden as they look ahead to November.

Former President Donald Trump will win the Utah Republican caucuses, CNN projects. 

There were 40 delegates at stake in the state’s GOP contest.   

President Joe Biden was handed his first defeat thus far in the Democratic primary by a man who very few knew before Tuesday night: Venture capitalist Jason Palmer, who CNN projected will win the American Samoa Democratic nominating contest.

While Palmer won in the tiny US territory – where fewer than 100 people participate in the caucus – it will not slow Biden’s commanding march to the Democratic nomination after the president dominated Super Tuesday races across the country.

Palmer, who’s never held political office, launched his ambitious bid for the White House in November. He’s from Baltimore, Maryland, and is currently a partner at New Markets Venture Partners. He previously worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft and Kaplan, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Palmer, 52, acknowledges on his campaign website that his candidacy is a longshot bid “with very little chance of winning,” and claims his campaign is more focused on “ideas, solutions and changing the conversation.”

In a video announcing his candidacy, Palmer vowed to be a champion for young Americans and touted his plan for a “talent economy powered by mission driven entrepreneurs and conscious capitalism.”

More context: American Samoa has been a US territory since 1900. The island is a part of Oceania— about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean.

Since American Samoa is a territory and not a US state, its citizens do not vote in the federal election. But, they do get to have a say in who becomes their candidates for president, by voting in the primaries.

With Super Tuesday in the rearview mirror, CNN’s entrance and exit polls of the Republican presidential contests so far highlight the extent to which the GOP electorate has been reshaped in former President Donald Trump’s image.

Across six states – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and California – most GOP primary voters said they’d consider Trump fit for the presidency even if he’s convicted of a crime.

In none of those states has a majority of the GOP electorate been willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

Exit polls are a valuable tool to help understand primary voters’ demographic profile and political views. Like all surveys, however, exit polls are estimates, not precise measurements of the electorate.

That’s particularly true for the preliminary set of exit poll numbers in Super Tuesday states, which haven’t yet been weighted to match the final results of the primaries. 

That means that the numbers may continue to update in those states. But the results in these six states – which are the only ones where entrance or exit polls were conducted this year – provide a glimpse of the type of voters turning out. 

Read more about what the exit polls show here.

While 16 US states and one US territory participated in primary contests on Super Tuesday, there are still several significant primaries to come this month.

CNN reported earlier today that former President Donald Trump’s team is aware he won’t cross the delegate threshold on Super Tuesday to become the presumptive Republican nominee, but they hope he secures enough delegates as early as next Tuesday, March 12, when another round of multistate primaries take place. It takes 1,215 of 2,429 delegates to win the Republican nomination.

Here’s a look at the upcoming primary dates:

Access the full election calendar.

Donald Trump left the White House a loser. But now, only one man – President Joe Biden – can thwart his predecessor’s return in what would be the most astonishing political comeback in history.

Only three years after Trump slunk out of Washington in disgrace – days after the mob he told to “fight like hell” ransacked the US Capitol – and even as he faces four looming criminal trials, he has already engineered a bounce back for the ages in the Republican primary.

Trump went on a roll on Super Tuesday. He won the Virginia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Maine, Texas, Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts and California Republican primaries. Every big state called in his favor brought the ex-president ever closer to a general election campaign against his 2020 vanquisher that polls show he’s got at least an even chance of winning.

As the results rolled in, Biden and Trump took aim at each other, setting the stage for what is sure to be a bitter clash in November certain to cleave even deeper national political divides.

Biden reacted to Trump’s Super Tuesday victories by immediately cranking up his general election attack on the former president – previewing an argument that will be at the center of his own campaign for a second term.

“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said in a statement.

Read more about Trump’s victories on Super Tuesday.

Donald Trump will win the Alaska Republican primary, CNN projects, as the former president takes another step toward cementing the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.  

Trump defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in a contest in which 29 delegates were at stake.  

The Alaska Republican party-run primary consisted of a presidential preference poll held at various locations around the state. 

Alaska and its three electoral college votes have gone to Republicans all but once since the state’s admission to the union in 1959 — with Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 being Democrats’ only victory.  

However, the state has shown an independent streak. It elected Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola to the House in a 2022 special election and reelected her again later that year. Trump won Alaska by 10 percentage points in 2020. 

Longshot presidential candidate Jason Palmer told CNN he was surprised by his Tuesday win in the American Samoa Democratic caucuses over President Joe Biden and credited his local staff and virtual campaign events for the victory.

The first-time candidate argued that the “most important thing we can do as Democrats is defeat” former President Donald Trump, who has dominated the Super Tuesday contests. 

Palmer said that part of why he entered the 2024 race was “to make sure that Biden campaigns vigorously.”

“When people say we’re going to be sleepwalking into a Trump election. It’s for real,” he told CNN in an interview early Wednesday.

“So I’m running to energize young voters and also center-left, center-right people with a positive vision of what we can do in the next four years. If Joe Biden’s just talking about Donald Trump and he’s just talking about foreign policy and foreign wars, that’s not going to win in November. You got to have a clear, positive agenda,” Palmer added. 

While he lauded Biden for his “tremendous service,” Palmer called on Biden to “pass the torch to the next generation of Americans.”

Palmer said he’ll continue his presidential campaign, focusing on the Arizona primary and releasing a 12-page proposal on reforming the US immigration system.

Many of the primaries for open seats on Tuesday are in seats that are safe for one party or the other. That means the winner of those contests – or the eventual runoffs – will very likely be coming to Congress next year. Here are some of those projected winners from Tuesday’s elections:

This post has been updated with additional projections.

Several incumbents in safe seats are facing threats from within their parties on Tuesday – and while those internecine contests might not necessarily affect partisan control, they can reveal a lot about where the base stands.

Here are the projected winners of those races:

This post was updated with additional projections.

GOP Rep. Barry Moore will defeat fellow Republican Rep. Jerry Carl in an Alabama primary for the state’s newly redrawn 1st Congressional District, CNN projects.

It is rare to see two incumbents run against one another, and the member-on-member matchup comes as House Republicans oversee a historically narrow majority and face a tough fight to retain control of the chamber in the 2024 elections.   

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey have advanced to the general election in the open primary for California’s open Senate seat, CNN projects, setting up an uphill battle for the state’s beleaguered GOP.

Schiff and Garvey were competing in two Senate contests Tuesday: one to fill the remainder of the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term, from November until January; and another for a full six-year term beginning January 2025.

The incumbent senator, Democrat Laphonza Butler, was appointed to the seat last fall after Feinstein’s death. Butler announced shortly after that she would not seek a full term.

Under California’s open primary system, all candidates run on the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, move on to the general election. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1, the seat is heavily favored to stay blue in November.

Garvey beat two Democratic congresswomen – Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee – to secure a place on the general election ballot, despite raising a fraction of what his opponents did and airing no TV ads.

Read more about the California Senate race.

This post has been updated with additional details about the race.

Some voters in North Carolina and Alabama are selecting US House candidates Tuesday in contests dramatically reshaped by congressional redistricting in recent months.

In North Carolina – where members of the Republican-controlled General Assembly drew a congressional map last fall that heavily favors their party – the GOP is poised to win at least 10 of 14 House seats this year, up from the current 7-7 partisan split. Flipping several seats now held by Democrats could help Republicans retain their threadbare majority in the chamber after November’s elections.

In Alabama, meanwhile, new lines have triggered an incumbent-versus-incumbent primary Tuesday for one House seat and could set up a history-making outcome this fall if Alabamians choose, for the first time, to send two Black lawmakers to the US House. Here are the projected winners of those races so far:

This post has been updated with additional projections.

House Speaker Mike Johnson – who recently met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida– congratulated the former president on his projected Super Tuesday wins, declaring him “our nominee.”

“I look forward to working together to retake the White House and grow our majority in Congress,” the Republican from Louisiana said in a statement.

Remember: Trump has not yet won the GOP nomination. He needs to win at least 1,215 delegates to clinch his party’s nomination.

Both party’s presidential frontrunners racked up a formidable series of victories on Super Tuesday.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump won their respective primaries in California and Texas — the states with the most delegates up for grabs in Tuesday’s races.

In a surprising victory, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley will win Vermont, CNN projects, picking up her first state win. Still, she remains far behind Trump in the delegate count.

Alaska was the last Super Tuesday poll to close at midnight ET.

Projected winners:

Estimated delegates won to date: Remember, it takes 1,215 of 2,429 delegates to win the Republican nomination and 1,968 of 3,934 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Republican:

Democrat:

Haley on her future: One donor said that they were told by the campaign that Haley would “make plans and next steps tomorrow.” Her campaign said in a statement it was “honored” to win Vermont and emphasized that there are voters who have an appetite for an alternative to Trump.

Biden campaign on American Samoa loss: The campaign shrugged off the president’s projected loss in the territory with one official calling it “silly news.” Campaign officials said that a very small number of votes is expected in American Samoa.

Dean Phillips considers campaign: The Democratic candidate said he will make a decision in the coming days about his political future after Super Tuesday’s results. Phillips announced late last month he was laying off staff after not being able to raise the funds to run his campaign as he had hoped.

Among all the races on the ballot Tuesday, it’s the primaries for the US House of Representatives – where Republicans are defending a razor-thin majority – that are by far the most important for the balance of power in Washington.

The outcomes of several House primaries Tuesday will shape just how competitive these key races will be in the general election. Most of them are in California, where candidates run on the same primary ballot, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advancing to November. Here are the projected winners of those races so far:

This post has been updated with additional projections.

If the presidential election were today, a group of voters in Wales, Wisconsin, who participated in a CNN focus group would be split on who they would vote for.

Four voters out of the group of 11 told CNN’s Gary Tuchman that they would vote for Donald Trump and four others said they would cast their ballots for Joe Biden. Three voters said they’d still vote for Trump’s GOP rival, Nikki Haley.

Asked for their predictions of who would win in November, six voters said they thought Trump would win while four predicted a Biden victory.

One voter, who said she would write-in Haley on the ballot, said she would do so because she is “very concerned about what a second term would mean” for Trump.

“I feel like we have to vote between the lesser of two bad choices. I mean really bad choices,” the voter said.

Another voter who said she is backing Trump said she’s doing so because “he’s the man for the country right now.” She commended Trump’s economic growth policy and his stance on border security.

As for Biden, one voter said he would vote for the president because they aren’t “worried that he’s not going to leave office.”

“I think that Trump may want to stay in the office or may make changes that precludes his leaving,” the voter said.

Wisconsin’s primary is on April 2.

As the clock strikes midnight ET, voting is ending in Alaska’s Republican primary. There are 29 GOP delegates at stake.

The Alaska Republican party-run primary consists of a presidential preference poll held at various locations around the state. Alaska Democrats will hold a party-run mail primary ending on April 6.

In presidential politics, Alaska is a safe state for Republicans. It’s voted for the Democratic presidential candidate only once since gaining statehood in 1959.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign said Tuesday that it was “honored” by her projected win in Vermont’s GOP presidential primary and that it showed that there are voters who want an alternative to former President Donald Trump.

“We’re honored to have received the support of millions of Americans across the country today, including in Vermont where Nikki became the first Republican woman to win two presidential primary contests,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united.’”

While Trump has dominated GOP races on Super Tuesday — CNN has projected that he will win at least 12 states — Haley’s campaign said there remains a “large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns” about the former president.

“That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better,” Perez-Cubas said.

Trump has a formidable delegate lead with 893 delegates, while Haley has 66.

A donor told CNN that they were told by Haley’s campaign that she would not get out of the race tonight but the campaign would “make plans and next steps tomorrow.”

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff will advance in California’s Senate race for Dianne Feinstein’s seat, CNN projects. It is too soon to project who he’ll face.

Under California’s open primary system, all candidates run on the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, move on to the general election. 

Former President Donald Trump repeated many of his usual falsehoods Tuesday night as he addressed a crowd of supporters. His claims touched on a range of topics from how much border wall was built during his administration to the country’s energy independence. 

CNN has fact-checked many of these claims before. Here are some of those previous fact-checks: 

President Joe Biden’s campaign fired back at former President Donald Trump after the GOP front-runner delivered remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday, telling CNN “most, if not all, of what he said was factually incorrect, and is provably incorrect — and to the point where you would think that if his lips are moving, he’s lying or he’s delusional, one of the two.” 

Mitch Landrieu, who serves as a co-chair for the Biden campaign, sought to cast Tuesday’s election results as troubling for the Trump campaign, telling CNN that stronger-than-expected returns for former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley are promising for Biden’s reelection bid.

“She’s winning in places where presidential elections are decided, and in that group of people, those folks are tired of Donald Trump taking the Republican Party as they once knew it,” he said. “The party with the Cheneys and the Bushes and the Reagans and the Romneys and all of those folks—and eviscerate it, and it’s one of the reasons that we think that we’ve have a really good chance, and that’s where we’re going to spend a lot of time, as well as securing our base.”

CNN reported earlier Tuesday that the Biden campaign sees those Haley voters as “gettable,” during the general election in November, while Biden made a direct appeal “[t]o every Democrat, Republican, and independent who believes in a free and fair America,” in a Super Tuesday statement.

Still, Landrieu acknowledged, some work remains to convince voters, including progressive voters who’ve expressed concerns over the administration’s support for Israel in Gaza.

US Rep. Colin Allred will win the Texas Democratic nomination for US Senate and face Republican Ted Cruz in November, CNN projects.

Allred defeated state Sen. Roland Gutierrez and seven other contenders in the Democratic primary Tuesday. And by crossing the 50% threshold, he avoids an automatic primary runoff in May. 

Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated Tuesday’s primary election results, calling it “an energizing moment for our campaign.”  

“Americans of all backgrounds are showing that they sense the urgency of this election, and that they are ready to stand with President (Joe) Biden and me in this fight to protect our fundamental freedoms,” Harris wrote in a statement.

CNN has projected that Biden will win nominating contests in all but one of the Democratic contests Tuesday. Former President Donald Trump also has had a successful night, with CNN projecting that he will win at least 12 Super Tuesday states.

The vice president warned in her statement that Trump “poses a fundamental threat to our democracy, and he must be stopped.”

Harris said that Biden will share the administration’s victories and its vision “of what more we can accomplish” during his State of the Union address Thursday. She added that she will travel to the swing states of Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona in the coming days.

“The president and I know reelection must be earned, and we will continue to put in the work to reach every possible voter,” she said. “Winning the fight to protect our fundamental freedoms will require nothing less.”

Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips is assessing Tuesday night’s results and said he will make a decision in the coming days about his political future.

“While Democratic Party loyalists are clearly, consistently, and overwhelmingly registering their preference for Joe Biden, it doesn’t alter the reality which compelled me to enter the race in the first place; Donald Trump is increasingly likely to defeat him in November,” he said in a statement to CNN.

The Minnesota Democrat had previously set March 5 as a benchmark for determining the viability of his candidacy. 

However, as his campaign progressed, Phillips said he wanted to look to polling data this summer comparing his electability versus that of President Joe Biden in hypothetical matchups against former President Donald Trump.

Phillips announced late last month he was laying off staff after not being able to raise the funds to run his campaign as he had hoped.

Nikki Haley’s Vermont supporters projected confidence during her visit to the state Sunday at a rally that commanded an overflow crowd outside of a hotel ballroom in South Burlington. Voters proudly described themselves as “independent minded” and wanted to support a candidate they viewed as reasonable and unifying, even if some of them historically have voted for Democrats.

CNN projected Haley will win Vermont’s GOP primary. The state’s Republican Party Chair Paul Dame, who stayed neutral in the contest, tonight said he was expecting a close race between Haley and former President Donald Trump. 

“In Vermont, we have a lot of the old school Rockefeller Republicans. And obviously, Gov. Phil Scott remains one of the most popular governors in the country and he came out and endorsed Nikki Haley pretty early. He was very involved in the event that she had here on Sunday and pretty much whenever a presidential candidate comes to Vermont, they’re usually at least getting delegates out of them,” Dame said when reached by phone Tuesday evening. 

“I think it says that Vermonters are looking for a different direction. Trump’s style of personality that he’s injected into politics hasn’t really been popular in Vermont,” Dame added. 

Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said he “underestimated the crossover vote.” 

“I’m wondering how much of that was not simply a vote against Trump, among Democrats and independents, but I wonder how much was sort of a protest vote against Biden as well,” said Dickinson who described Vermont’s Republicans as “more liberal than Republicans in other states.” 

Republican State Rep. James Harrison who attended Haley’s rally Sunday described her win as a “positive development.” He said that “Vermont often marches to a different drummer.” Harrison says Haley is a “breath of fresh air” but is clear eyed that the race ultimately will come down to Biden and Trump. He hasn’t made up his mind who he will support.

The Biden campaign is shrugging off projections tonight that showed President Joe Biden losing the American Samoa Democratic primary to venture capitalist Jason Palmer, with one campaign official calling it “silly news.”

Campaign officials explained to reporters that a very small number of votes is expected in American Samoa and pointed to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Democratic primary victory there in 2020. 

Pressed for more details, the Biden campaign official said Palmer had a “platform of being an advocate for American Samoa.” 

A Palmer campaign official told CNN the candidate had three full time campaign staffers on the ground but did not visit the island himself, instead appearing virtually at events.

Former President Donald Trump will win the California Republican presidential primary, CNN projects, as he closes in on his third straight GOP nomination. 

There were 169 delegates at stake in California tonight. 

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Trump won both primaries. 

President Joe Biden will win the California Democratic primary, CNN projects, as he cruises to his party’s nomination for a second term. 

There were 424 pledged delegates at stake in California tonight.  

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016; Biden beat Sanders and others in 2020. 

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will win Vermont’s Republican primary, CNN projects.

There were 17 delegates at stake in the state.

On the ballot Tuesday are primaries for US Senate and governor, but it’s the primaries for the US House – where Republicans are defending a razor-thin majority – that are by far the most important for the balance of power in Washington.

The outcomes of several House primaries Tuesday will shape just how competitive these key races will be in the general election. Many of those seats are in California. Here are the projected winners of those races outside the Golden State:

In Vermont, the race between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley has been close all night.

With 88% of the vote counted, Haley currently holds a small lead with 50.3% of the vote to Trump’s 45.7.

CNN’s John King said that there is a possibility that Haley could get a win tonight on a Super Tuesday dominated by Trump.

It’s 11 p.m. ET and polls are closing in California and voting is ending in Utah’s GOP caucuses.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have secured a large chunk of delegates after their projected wins in the Texas primaries. The two frontrunners have nearly swept all of the races so far.

In remarks, Trump said that it has been “an amazing night” and vowed to unify what he called a “divided country.” Meantime, Biden touted the work his administration has accomplished and issued a stark warning that a second Trump term would mean a return to “chaos, division, and darkness,” according to a statement.

Get up to speed:

Polls closed in most states: A majority of Super Tuesday states are releasing results after polls closed earlier in the night. That includes Vermont, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas. In Utah, Democrats held a primary and the polls closed at 10 p.m. ET.

Still ahead: Utah Republicans have opted to have a party-run caucus. Voters can drop off ballots at caucus sites until 11 p.m. ET. Polls in California — where there is another large amount of delegates up for grabs — will also close at 11 p.m. ET and in Alaska at midnight ET.

Projected winners:

Estimated delegates won to date: Remember, it takes 1,215 of 2,429 delegates to win the Republican nomination and 1,968 of 3,934 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Republican:

Democrat:

Pressure on Haley to drop out: The GOP candidate is watching the returns with her political team in South Carolina as some of her fellow Republicans in the state ramp up calls for her to drop out and unite behind Trump. Haley’s team has made clear they were focused on tonight and declined to say what’s ahead for her campaign. 

Former President Donald Trump celebrated dominating the Republican races on Super Tuesday and bashed President Joe Biden during his election night victory remarks that did not mention his GOP primary rival Nikki Haley. 

“This was an amazing night and an amazing day, it’s been an incredible period of time in our country’s history,” Trump said at his election night watch party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. 

CNN projected he will win primary contests in at least 11 Super Tuesday states: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Trump thanked his family, his campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita as well as his campaign staff. He claimed that “we have a very divided country,” and vowed to unify it soon.

“We have a great Republican party with tremendous talent and we want to have unity and we’re going to have unity and it’s going to happen very quickly,” Trump said.

Trump went on to bash Biden in his speech and said “we’re going to win this election because we have no choice.”

CNN reported earlier this evening that Trump’s team is aware he won’t cross the delegate threshold tonight to become the presumptive Republican nominee, but the hope is that he secures enough delegates to ensure he does meet that milestone as early as next Tuesday, March 12. The campaign is also hoping that a definitive win tonight will effectively force his lone GOP rival, Nikki Haley, to drop out of the race.

President Joe Biden touted the work his administration has accomplished in its first term in office while issuing a stark warning that a second Donald Trump term would mean a return to “chaos, division, and darkness,” in a statement released Tuesday.

“Four years ago, I ran because of the existential threat Donald Trump posed to the America we all believe in,” Biden wrote in a statement, highlighting progress under his administration on jobs, inflation, prescription drug prices, and gun control.

He then warned that if Trump returns to the White House, the progress his administration as made will be at risk.

“(Trump) is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people,” Biden noted.

Earlier Tuesday, CNN reported that the Biden campaign was closely watching GOP primary results for Nikki Haley voters they considered “gettable” in a general election matchup against Trump in November.

GOP candidate Nikki Haley says she has not made a final decision as to whether or not she would endorse former President Donald Trump if she ends her presidential bid, but her campaign is receiving a lot of feedback on the subject, sources familiar with recent discussions tell CNN.

People who are close with Haley have different opinions. Some believe that it would be good for her to back Trump because she would be viewed as a team player. Others ardently oppose her endorsing him because that would give Haley the freedom to be critical of Trump and build her own movement. They have shared those opinions with Haley and her campaign in recent days and weeks, sources said.

Haley herself has recently said she is not focused on endorsing anyone because she is focused on winning herself. 

“When you’re in the middle of a fight, you don’t think about what you’re going to do,” Haley said Tuesday.

But she has also indicated in recent days that she no longer feels bound by the pledge she made last year to support the eventual GOP nominee. Her rationale is twofold: she has said that the Republican National Convention today is different than it was when she made that pledge, and she has pointed out that Trump did not make the pledge himself. 

Her comments mark an about-face for the former South Carolina governor after she initially made the pledge to get on the debate stage, and said she would honor that commitment as recently as a few weeks ago.

Former President Donald Trump bashed his GOP primary rival Nikki Haley, saying in an interview Tuesday the former South Carolina governor was angry because her campaign is “just getting nowhere.”

“She’s gone crazy, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said on the Mark Levin Show.

Trump said Haley was bitter, and had “gone haywire,” and described her as a “very angry person.”

“She’s become really angry, and I think it’s that she’s just getting nowhere,” Trump said. “We’ll see if she straightens out, maybe she will.”

Remember: Haley has so far only won the GOP primary contest in Washington, DC. Trump has dominated every other early nominating contest and CNN has projected that he will win the primary in at least 11 more states Tuesday.

President Joe Biden will win the Democratic primary in Utah, CNN projects.

There were 30 pledged delegates at stake in the primary.

In 2020, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Democratic contest. Biden came in second place.

Former President Donald Trump will win the Massachusetts Republican primary, CNN projects.   

There were 40 delegates at stake in Massachusetts tonight. 

Many Republican primary and caucus voters baselessly claim that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 presidential election, CNN’s exit and entrance polls in six states over the past two months show. 

None of the states had a majority of the GOP electorate willing to acknowledge that Biden legitimately won the election. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Two-thirds of Iowa caucusgoers in January said Biden didn’t legitimately win, according to entrance polls. About six in 10 primary voters in North Carolina on Tuesday and in South Carolina last month felt this way, exit polls showed.

Just shy of six in 10 California primary voters and about half of Virginia voters on Tuesday, as well as in New Hampshire in January, said Biden was not the legitimate winner, according to exit polls.

Donald Trump has lost his lead in Vermont, where it’s been a seesaw between him and Nikki Haley this evening. So far, 81% of votes have been counted there, with Haley having 49.3% of the vote and Trump trailing behind with 46.8%.

Remember: Whoever wins the GOP nomination needs to win at least 1,215 delegates. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination needs to win 1,968 delegates.

The post has been updated with the latest results in the key races.

Democratic candidate Jason Palmer will win the American Samoa Democratic presidential caucuses, CNN projects, handing President Joe Biden his only defeat so far this primary season.

Palmer is a business executive from Baltimore, Maryland, who previously worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to his campaign website.

He launched his extremely long-shot bid for president in November.

Palmer celebrated his win on a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi contributed reporting to this post.

As the clock strikes 10 p.m. ET, polls are beginning to close in Utah’s Democratic primary, where there are 30 delegates at stake for the party.

Utah Republicans have opted to have party-run caucuses to allocate delegates rather than participate in the state-run party.

While the parties have used different processes in recent cycles amid shifting approaches from the state, in 2020 both parties participated in the state-run primary.

Former President Donald Trump will win the Minnesota Republican primary, CNN projects.  

There were 39 delegates at stake in Minnesota tonight. 

President Joe Biden will win the Minnesota Democratic primary, CNN projects.  

There were 75 pledged delegates at stake in Minnesota tonight. 

Who won in 2020: Biden won the Democratic primary. 

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said there is no path forward for Nikki Haley and that it’s time for the Republican Party to coalesce around former President Donald Trump for their nominee.

“I think it’s pretty clear that people have spoken. I voted for Trump, not against Nikki. And at the end of the day, there’s really no pathway left. The sooner we can come together, the better. I think Nikki Haley can make a case why Trump is better than Biden on a lot of issues better than most Republicans,” Graham told CNN’s Dana Bash.

Even though Haley has signaled that she may not honor the Republican National Committee pledge to back the nominee, Graham said he believes she will eventually throw her support behind Trump.

“I’m pretty confident, I’ve known her most of my political life, that she’ll be a team player. That there will come a time where she realizes, and I hope this will come sooner, rather than later, that this is not her moment and there’s a lot at stake. I’d find it difficult to imagine that Nikki Haley would not support President Trump when it’s all said and done,” he added.

Fellow South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is Graham’s favored choice for Trump’s potential running mate.

“We play golf, and we talk about a lot of things. He’s just really impressed with Tim’s enthusiasm, the way that Tim sells Donald Trump,” Graham said. 

“There are a lot of good choices. I just feel like Tim Scott’s ready to be president on day one,” Graham said.

Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina is the lone House Republican backing GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

In an interview with CNN, Norman acknowledged he is on an island in the GOP — which he called “an interesting” experience — and said he has faced some pressure to fall in line behind Donald Trump. But Norman said he will stick with Haley as long as she is in the race.

Norman did get some recent company across the Capitol from GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who both endorsed Haley ahead of Super Tuesday.

Asked about Trump’s growing irritation over Haley not dropping out, Norman said: “I don’t quite understand. This is March.”

Norman also expressed concern about Trump’s viability as a general election candidate — something few in the GOP have been willing to say, at least publicly, as Trump marches his way toward the nomination. However, he will back Trump if he ultimately becomes the nominee.

Republican and Democratic leaders in the House agree on at least one thing: the path to the majority may run — at least in part — through California, where there are several competitive races this fall. 

That’s why both parties invested heavy resources to ensure their favored candidate gets over the finish line tonight, in hopes of giving them their best chance at victory this November. 

Among the races party leaders are watching closely: the swing seat represented by Rep. David Valadao, one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump.

Valadao is facing a far-right challenger in Chris Mathys, while Democratic party leaders have sought to boost their preferred pick, former Assembly member Rudy Salas, over Democratic state Sen. Melissa Hurtado. 

The way the race shakes out tonight could have major implications for the fall.

“We’re looking for a good night for our candidates. We are watching a few of those states closely,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN, specifically naming California and Texas. “But I think it’s gonna work out well for us.”

Elsewhere, party leaders are keeping tabs on some key down-ballot races in states like North Carolina. 

GOP leaders are paying especially close attention to the Republican contest to take on Democratic Rep. Don Davis. The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), which is aligned with Johnson, is boosting Laurie Buckhout over repeat candidate Sandy Smith. 

CLF spent against Smith in the previous election cycle and she won the primary but went on to lose the general election. And Republicans worry Smith could cost them the seat this November if she wins the primary again.

North Carolina Rep. Jeff Jackson will win the state’s Democratic primary for attorney general, CNN projects.  

Jackson, known for his active presence on TikTok, represents the state’s 13th Congressional District but decided not to run for reelection after state Republicans redrew the seat to heavily favor the GOP.  

Jackson will next face off against a fellow congressman, Dan Bishop, who was unopposed in the Republican primary. North Carolina hasn’t elected a GOP attorney general in more than a century, though a few have been appointed by Republican governors. 

The state’s current attorney general, Josh Stein, will win the Democratic nomination for governor, CNN projected earlier Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump will win the Colorado Republican presidential primary, CNN projects, continuing his march toward the GOP nomination. 

There were 37 delegates at stake in Colorado tonight. 

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won in 2016; Trump in 2020. 

President Joe Biden will win the Colorado Democratic primary, CNN projects, as he moves closer to clinching the party’s nomination. 

There were 72 pledged delegates at stake in Colorado tonight.  

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won both of Colorado’s last two nominating contests. 

How, exactly, are we supposed to view Donald Trump’s candidacy?

He’s not an incumbent, since he’s not currently president. But he is certainly incumbent adjacent — people know what kind of president he was and he enjoys near-universal name recognition. He could be the first person since Grover Cleveland to lose the White House and then come back for a redo four years later.

Viewed as a non-incumbent, Trump is performing historically well in the Republican presidential primary. He has won every primary and caucus so far except for one, in Washington, DC and there’s no reason to believe he will lose any states on Super Tuesday.

It is a far better primary record so far than every non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate in the modern primary era. But, as discussed, Trump isn’t entirely non-incumbent. His margins in primary contests are worse than incumbent presidential candidates of the modern primary era, including when he was an actual incumbent in 2020.

His only remaining rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley continues to win a not insubstantial portion of the vote – 20% to 30% — in some states. In Vermont, obviously not a hotbed of support for Trump, the former president has only a slim lead over Haley as early returns rolled in. There are places in Virginia and North Carolina, around cities and college campuses, where Haley is actually beating Trump in early returns. It doesn’t mean his position as frontrunner is in danger. It does suggest there is a kernel of the GOP that will continue to resist him. 

A major question of the coming general election campaign will be what happens to those anti-Trump Republican voters in November? If Joe Biden were losing that much of the Democratic vote to his two rivals, Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, it’s safe to assume the angst among Democrats about his candidacy would become much more pronounced. Biden faced scrutiny after “uncommitted” got a little more than 13% of the primary vote in Michigan, part of an organized protest to his policy on Israel.

President Joe Biden will win the Alabama Democratic primary, CNN projects, continuing his march to the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.  

There were 52 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention at stake in Alabama’s primary. 

The state’s nine electoral college votes are a near-lock for Republicans in November. But Alabama’s Democratic primary played a role in helping Biden effectively cement the party’s nomination in 2020, when he defeated Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders there by 47 percentage points. 

Donald Trump will win Alabama’s Republican primary, CNN projects, taking another step toward locking down the party’s presidential nomination for the third consecutive election.  

The former president defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, his lone remaining challenger.  

There were 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention at stake in Alabama’s GOP primary. 

The state’s nine electoral college votes are a near-lock for Republicans in November. Trump defeated President Joe Biden there by more than 25 percentage points in 2020. 

Two resolutions circulating within the Republican National Committee that aimed to ensure the committee maintained neutrality and would have barred it from paying former President Donald Trump’s personal legal bills are dead, the bills’ sponsor confirmed to CNN.

“For us to bring the legal bill resolution before the full RNC committee, we had to have two of the three RNC members from 10 states as cosponsors,” Henry Barbour, Republican national committeeman from Mississippi, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We only had eight states cosponsoring the resolution, so we missed the deadline.” The deadline was today.

Barbour added that the neutrality resolution was given up about a week ago. It would have ensured that the RNC and its leadership maintain neutrality “and not take on additional staff from any of the Presidential campaigns until a nominee is clearly determined by reaching 1,215 delegates,” according to drafts previously obtained by CNN.

“We’ve made our point,” Barbour said. “The RNC has to be neutral in primaries according to longstanding party rules. In essence, we were saying that the Trump campaign was trying to change the rules in the middle of the game by declaring the primary was over after only two states voted.”

The second resolution would have barred the RNC from paying the legal bills of “either former president Donald Trump or former Ambassador Nikki Haley unrelated to this 2024 Presidential election,” per the drafts.

Remember: Trump has been hit with more than half a billion dollars in legal penalties in recent weeks in two civil cases. He also faces 91 charges in four other criminal cases.

President Joe Biden will win the Arkansas Democratic primary, CNN projects, moving closer to clinching the party’s 2024 presidential nod.  

There were 31 delegates at stake in Arkansas’ primary. 

Republicans are strongly favored to carry Arkansas’ 6 electoral college votes in November — something every GOP presidential nominee has done since home-state former Democratic governor Bill Clinton was last on the ballot in 1996.  

But Arkansas was part of Biden’s big Super Tuesday in 2020, when he won the state by 18 percentage points and took a big step toward winning the Democratic nomination.  

Former President Donald Trump will win the Arkansas Republican primary, CNN projects, carrying a state where his former White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is now governor.  

Trump defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in a state where 40 delegates to the Republican National Convention were on the line.  

It was another win in a contested Arkansas GOP presidential primary for Trump, who in 2016 narrowly defeated Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by just 2.3 percentage points.  

Republicans are strongly favored to carry Arkansas’ 6 electoral college votes in November — something every GOP presidential nominee has done since home-state former Democratic governor Bill Clinton was last on the ballot in 1996. 

Donald Trump will win the Maine Republican presidential primary, CNN projects, again defeating Nikki Haley as he nears clinching the GOP nomination. 

There were 20 delegates at stake in Maine tonight. 

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won in 2016; Trump in 2020. 

President Joe Biden will win the Texas Democratic primary, CNN projects. 

There were 244 pledged delegates at stake in the primary.  

In 2020, Biden also won the state’s Democratic primary. 

Former President Donald Trump will win the Texas Republican primary, CNN projects, as he moves toward clinching his party’s nomination for the third presidential cycle in a row. 

There were 161 delegates at stake in the primary.  

In 2016, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ted Cruz won their respective primaries in Texas. 

Sen. Ted Cruz will win the Texas Senate GOP primary, CNN projects.

It’s 9 p.m. ET, which means polls are beginning to close across Colorado, Texas and Minnesota.

Nikki Haley is watching the returns with her political team in the Charleston, South Carolina area, as some of her fellow Republicans in the state ramp up calls for her to drop out and unite behind Donald Trump. The former president has urged surrogates to say as much in television appearances and on X, one person familiar tells CNN. 

The former South Carolina governor has no planned public appearances tonight, a stark contrast to her schedule on every other election night when she has delivered public remarks. Haley’s team has made clear they were focused on tonight and declined to say what’s ahead for her campaign. 

When Haley was asked earlier today on Fox whether she would exit the race and back Trump if she continues to trail him in Tuesday’s contests, Haley said, “If I were to get out of the race, it would still be the longest presidential general election in history…I don’t know why everybody is so adamant that they have to follow Trump’s lead to get me out of this race.”

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are projected to win in battleground states as they both aim to pick up delegates on Super Tuesday and clinch their party’s nomination.

Catch up on what is going on:

Polls that are now closed: Vermont, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Coming up next: Polls in Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas are the next to close at 9 p.m. ET. After that, California and Utah polls will close at 11 p.m. ET and in Alaska at 12 a.m. ET.

Projected winners:

Estimated delegates won to date: Remember, it takes 1,215 of 2,429 delegates to win the Republican nomination and 1,968 of 3,934 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Republican:

Democrat:

Frontrunners are looking to November: Biden and Trump agree that the general election campaign is finally underway and dramatically accelerating this week. For Biden and the White House, “it can’t come soon enough,” in the words of one top adviser. Meantime, the Trump campaign intends to keep making this race “all about Biden,” an adviser said

What about Nikki Haley: The GOP candidate is not planning to make any public remarks tonight and she has not promised to keep her campaign alive after today’s results have been tallied. Haley has repeatedly said she has not thought beyond Super Tuesday, citing the importance of allowing voters in more than a dozen states that vote today to have their voices heard.

Donald Trump maintains his lead in Vermont, but only by one vote.

With 33% of the vote counted so far in the state, the former president currently has 10,992 votes, while his GOP challenger Nikki Haley has 10,991.

President Joe Biden will win the Massachusetts Democratic primary, CNN projects. 

There were 92 pledged delegates at stake in Massachusetts tonight. 

Who won in 2020: Biden won the Democratic primary. 

President Joe Biden will win Maine’s Democratic primary, CNN projects, as he closes in on a general election race with former President Donald Trump.

There were 24 pledged delegates at stake in Maine tonight.

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won in 2016; Biden in 2020.

Something historic could be brewing in North Carolina, where Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is projected to win the GOP gubernatorial primary.

Robinson, if he wins in November, would be the first Black Republican elected as governor in the United States — and one of only a handful of Black governors in US history. 

Two of the Black governors were not elected. Gov. David Paterson, who served from 2008 to 2010 in New York, and Gov. Pinckney Pinchback, who served for a little over a month as governor of Louisiana in 1872 and 1873, were elevated to office after their predecessors resigned or were driven out

Just three Black men have ever been elected governor. The first of those was Gov. Douglas Wilder, elected in Virginia in 1990. Decades later, there was Gov. Deval Patrick, who served two terms in Massachusetts from 2007 until 2015. Finally, Gov. Wes Moore was elected in Maryland in 2022. Pinchback, who assumed the office in Louisiana during Reconstruction, was a Republican, but the four Black governors in the last three decades have been Democrats.

Robinson’s campaign is controversial, however, since he has a history of saying controversial things, such as last year when he mocked survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, or when he referred to “homosexuality” as “filth.” He has also compared abortion to slavery, although when it was revealed that he paid for his girlfriend, now wife, to have an abortion, he said that experience informed his current anti-abortion stance. CNN’s Gregory Krieg has a more in-depth story about Robinson’s controversial comments.

People who would normally be applauding the idea of another Black governor are opposed to Robinson.

“The idea you could have another elected Black governor, the first one for the Republican party… should have me excited, but I am depressed and distress and sad because he says horrifically bad stuff,” CNN political commentator Van Jones, responding to Robinson’s primary win.

Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican primaries in every state, despite being the non-incumbent, CNN’s Jake Tapper noted Tuesday night, which has not happened in modern presidential politics.

CNN projects Trump will win North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, so far this Super Tuesday.

“People did jump into the race to run against him. There was a whole field. You might remember Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, people thought he was going to dominate. No, the dominant politician on the Republican side is Donald Trump and to give the man his due: He has won — with the exception of Washington, DC — he’s won every contest,” Tapper said.

Tapper also said that the ratio of delegates Trump winning tonight is 99 delegates to every one delegate Nikki Haley is winning.

CNN projects Trump will win North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, so far this Super Tuesday.

Fmer President Donald Trump will win Tennessee, CNN projects, as he marches toward clinching the GOP nomination. 

There were 58 delegates at stake in the Republican primary.  

In 2016, Trump and Hillary Clinton won their respective primaries in the state. 

President Joe Biden will win the Tennessee Democratic primary, CNN projects, as he glides toward securing his party’s 2024 nomination.

There were 63 delegates at stake in the primary tonight.

In 2020, Biden also won the state’s Democratic primary.

It’s 8:30 p.m. ET and polls are closing in Arkansas, where there are 40 Republican delegates and 31 Democratic delegates at stake.

In the 30 years since former President Bill Clinton’s last term as governor, Arkansas has become a thoroughly Republican state. Republicans have complete control of state government and make up the entirety of the state’s congressional delegation.

However, the state used to have a bipartisan streak in its federal representation. Prior to 2015, Arkansas hadn’t been represented by two Republican senators since the 1870s.

House Democrats are divided over California’s Senate race — which has pitted several congressional Democrats against one another.  

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN she was out campaigning for her close ally Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff this weekend and has been making calls today on his behalf trying to get out the vote. Schiff has secured endorsements from a number of California Democrats, including Reps. Eric Swalwell and Pete Aguilar.

“Congress overwhelming is for him. He’s a great person. And with all due respect to the other candidates they are lovely — they’re talented and fabulous — but he is the one,” Pelosi said.

But Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), is backing fellow CPC member Barbara Lee, who is the only black candidate in the race. California Reps. Maxine Waters and Ro Khanna have also endorsed Lee. 

Meanwhile, Rep. Katie Porter – also a CPC member —  has picked up endorsements from Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Robert Garcia of California.

More on the race: In California, the top two vote getters, regardless of party, will advance. That means that if the Republican candidate Steve Garvey finishes in the top two, it would box out two of the Democrat candidates this fall. Schiff has heavily attacked his GOP opponent in his campaign, which some Democrats have complained has effectively elevated Garvey. 

Former President Donald Trump will win the Oklahoma Republican primary, CNN projects. 

There were 43 delegates at stake in Oklahoma tonight. 

President Joe Biden will win the Oklahoma Democratic primary, CNN projects.

There were 36 pledged delegates at stake in Oklahoma tonight.

Who won in 2020: Biden won the Democratic primary.

Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein will face each other in North Carolina governor’s race, CNN projects.

More context: Despite their total control of the state legislature, Republicans have been locked out of the governor’s office since Roy Cooper was elected to the first of two terms in 2016, on the same day that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president. Cooper cannot run again due to term limits, paving the way for Stein – his predecessor as state attorney general – to seek North Carolina’s highest office. 

One thing the Biden campaign is watching very closely tonight: The “gettable” Nikki Haley voters.

Biden campaign officials told CNN that they are very interested in data points coming in from various states that show significant portions of Haley supporters who say that either that they would not vote for Trump in November, or are at the very least unwilling to say they’ll support whoever the GOP nominee is in the fall.

Those voters, the Biden campaign said, are their “gettable” and “turned off by Trump” voters.

Trump is not doing himself any favors, the Biden campaign believes, by continuing to be divisive and corrosive in his rhetoric – something the Biden campaign has been eager to highlight at every opportunity.

As CNN has reported, the president himself has directly ordered his top campaign aides to be much more aggressive in highlighting Trump’s most unhinged and erratic comments.

It’s now 8 p.m. ET and polls are closing in five states: Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Of all the states that voted Tuesday, North Carolina stands out as the one most likely to remain a hotbed for political activity long after tonight.

For Donald Trump, already looking ahead to a potential rematch with President Joe Biden, his weekend visit ahead of Super Tuesday was likely the first of many visits to North Carolina as he seeks a third consecutive win in this key battleground. Both candidates were projected to win their respective primaries in the state tonight.

North Carolina, which Trump narrowly won in 2020, is emerging as a critical piece of Biden’s reelection strategy. The president’s advisers view its 16 electoral votes as not only attainable, considering the state’s changing demographics, but also as something of an insurance policy, given challenges in Michigan and other battleground states.

“North Carolina is going to be very competitive for both sides, and no one will be able to take it for granted,” said Paul Shumaker, a veteran operative behind many of the GOP’s statewide victories in recent years. “It’s going to be in a constant state of flux.”

Leading into Super Tuesday, the weekend visits from the former president, Haley and Vice President Kamala Harris underscore the increasing importance of North Carolina on the electoral map.

It has been 16 years since Barack Obama delivered a North Carolina surprise in 2008. That lonely victory — the first and only time a Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state in nearly five decades — offers less of a nostalgic enticement for Biden’s campaign than the potential for true opportunity because of fast-growing suburban areas in Wake County around Raleigh, Mecklenburg County outside Charlotte, and a handful of other cities.

Read more about why North Carolina is critical in the 2024 election cycle.

Results continue to come in as polls close in some states across the country. More than one-third of the total delegates in both the GOP and Democratic primaries are at stake in contests in more than a dozen states.

Polls have already closed in Vermont, Virginia and North Carolina.

Here are the projected winners so far:

What’s coming next: More results are expected as Super Tuesday heads into its busiest hour of the night.

What the exit polls are saying: Nearly two-thirds of North Carolina primary voters say that they’d consider former President Donald Trump fit for the presidency if he’s convicted of a crime, according to the initial results of CNN’s exit poll of Republican primary voters. Slightly over half of GOP primary voters in Virginia said the same. 

Big picture: As Donald Trump’s team expects him to cruise through Super Tuesday, the former president is hoping to extinguish any hope for GOP challenger Nikki Haley’s campaign. Biden isn’t facing any major competition, but he’s looking for a strong showing as he gears up for a possible rematch with Trump in November. His campaign announced the strongest month of grassroots fundraising in February.

This post has been updated with additional poll closing times.

President Joe Biden will win the Democratic primary in Vermont, CNN projects. 

There were 16 pledged delegates at stake in the primary.  

In 2020, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Democratic contest. Biden came in second place. 

Former President Donald Trump is watching the returns Tuesday night with his political team after spending the weekend hosting donors at Mar-a-Lago in Florida as he seeks to raise more money and is deeply concerned about his finances. 

He also met with Elon Musk in recent days, a source familiar tells CNN, though it’s not clear whether the Tesla CEO plans to donate to Trump.

The meeting with Musk was first reported by the New York Times. 

Nikki Haley has no public appearances tonight while Trump has invited hundreds of his supporters, donors and elected officials to his Mar-a-Lago club — a Super Tuesday of contrasts for the remaining GOP presidential contenders.

As primary polls begin to close in some states, President Joe Biden’s campaign is already looking to the general election and asking donors to chip in to help fight against an “onslaught of attacks,” from former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

“This month, thousands and thousands of people from across the country have contributed to help reelect Joe Biden and keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” the campaign wrote in an appeal to supporters Tuesday evening. “But here’s the thing: Today is Super Tuesday, and Trump is now closer than ever to securing the official nomination.”  

The email, which the campaign blasted out just minutes after polls in Virginia and Vermont closed at 7 p.m. ET, warns that “Trump and his MAGA extremism is a threat to our democracy, and we must do everything we can to defeat him.” 

But it also offers a glimpse into how the Biden campaign has largely approached the GOP field since January’s New Hampshire GOP primary, when campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez announced Trump “has all but locked up the GOP nomination,” before turning the campaign’s attention to the former president and the general election in November.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will win the Republican nomination for governor, CNN projects, setting up a general election campaign in the Tar Heel State that could mirror the anticipated presidential matchup in a crucial 2024 battleground. 

Robinson defeated two other candidates to get the party’s nod. 

Endorsed by former President Donald Trump on the eve of the primary, Robinson has been the state’s second-ranked executive since 2021, serving under (and in opposition to) term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Robinson will slide comfortably onto a ticket with Trump in November. A fierce supporter of gun rights and abortion bans, he has also faced accusations of dabbling in antisemitic, misogynist and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. 

Read more about the North Carolina governor’s race.

Former President Joe Biden will win the North Carolina Democratic primary, CNN projects.  

There were 116 pledged delegates at stake in North Carolina tonight. 

Who won in 2020: Biden won the Democratic primary. 

Former President Donald Trump will win the North Carolina GOP primary, CNN projects.  

There were 74 delegates at stake in North Carolina tonight. 

It is 7:30 p.m. ET and polls are closing across North Carolina. There are 74 GOP delegates and 116 Democratic delegates at stake.

Unaffiliated voters can vote in either primary. Voters affiliated with a party can only vote in that primary.

The state’s political landscape: Republicans have carried North Carolina in 10 of the last 12 presidential elections. Former President Donald Trump eked out a victory in North Carolina in 2020, winning the state with 49.9% of the vote to Joe Biden’s 48.6%.

Democrats generally run best in the Piedmont urban counties, which have sizable Black voting blocs and large numbers of young professionals, especially in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research Triangle. The state’s rural counties are largely Republican, besides some northeastern counties with large Black populations. The western mountains also support Republicans – although Buncombe County, home to Asheville, stands out as a dot of blue. Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, the state’s largest city, has undergone a political shift.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the general election will ultimately come down to “a comparison” between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump’s records as president. 

Even though Nikki Haley is still battling former President Donald Trump in the Republican primary, Super Tuesday is expected to bring him closer to locking down the nomination.

“It’s gonna just be a comparison. We’re already there, and we’re going to have two people who both have been president and who will have records to run on,” Warren said.

Warren said she hopes Biden takes the State of the Union on Thursday as an opportunity to communicate directly with the American people about what he has achieved in the last three years. 

Asked about the warning signs facing Biden’s reelection campaign when it comes to rebuilding the progressive coalition and those voting “uncommitted” in Michigan’s presidential primary due to his role in Israel’s war in Gaza, Warren said there are things that must be done right now to move toward permanent peace in the region. 

“We need those hostages returned. We need a ceasefire. We need to open up, so that there is plenty of humanitarian aid flowing in and we need to push leadership so that it’s moving toward a permanent peace. That is a two-state solution,” Warren said. 

The campaigns of Donald Trump and Joe Biden have their sights set on a similar target: Nikki Haley supporters.

And fewer places are being studied closer than the fast-growing suburbs around Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina.

The votes for Haley hold important lessons — perhaps less so for her candidacy than for Trump, Biden — or even a third-party candidate. Can Trump win back those supporters?

The Biden campaign has already sent a team to North Carolina. An office is opening soon in Raleigh, with others to open in the coming weeks and months.

It’s been 16 years since Barack Obama won the state — the last Democrat to do so — but Trump’s margin narrowed to just over 1 point in 2020 from more than 3 points in 2016.

The Biden campaign dismisses the notion that North Carolina is an insurance policy — if Michigan or other battlegrounds become more challenging — but the 16 electoral votes may be at the center of election night in November.

Virginia is among the several states that held elections on Super Tuesday. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are projected to win their respective primaries in the state and pick up more delegates in their quest for their party’s nomination.

Both candidates will also be looking for clues about how the general election could shape up in November.

Here’s a look at the state’s political landscape:

Virginia has an open primary, which means registered voters can participate in either party’s election.

Former President Donald Trump will win the Virginia Republican primary, CNN projects. 

There were 48 delegates at stake in this primary.  

In 2016, Trump and Hillary Clinton won their respective contests in the Virginia primary. 

Over 100 Republican lawmakers are co-hosting a fundraiser for former President Donald Trump in Washington DC tomorrow night – a day after Super Tuesday and on the eve of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

It’s the latest example of how Trump has loomed over just about everything inside the GOP on Capitol Hill. 

On the legislative front, Trump effectively killed a bipartisan border deal and has encouraged Republicans to reject a foreign aid package.

On internal leadership races, Trump helped tank Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s speakership bid and may have some influence in the race to replace GOP Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump has encouraged Sen. Steve Daines to run for the job, while others have given Trump a heads up before announcing leadership bids: Sen. John Cornyn said he called Trump before announcing his plans to run for leader, and Sen. John Barrasso told CNN he called Trump this morning ahead of announcing his run for Republican whip.

And on congressional races, the heads of both the Senate and House campaign arms have sought to ensure alignment between Trump and some of their candidates. Speaker Mike Johnson and NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson recently trekked to Mar-a-Lago to lobby Trump to endorse some Republicans in key primaries.

“He’s gonna be the next president of the United States. I need to have a good relationship with him,” Hudson told CNN.

Some voters in North Carolina and Alabama are selecting US House candidates Tuesday in contests dramatically reshaped by congressional redistricting in recent months.

Here’s what to know about the contests:

Legal confrontations lead to new Alabama lines: In a legal confrontation that drew national attention to Alabama, a federal court approved a new congressional map last year that gives the state’s African American residents – who make up about 27% of the population – the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in a second House district.

The contest has drawn 18 candidates — 11 Democrats and seven Republicans. Given racial voting patterns in the state, political observers say a Democrat is likely to prevail in the fall and a Black candidate could emerge as the victor. Most of the Democrats seeking the nomination are African American, as are several of the Republican contenders.

The court-ordered redistricting has also thrown two Republican incumbents – Reps. Jerry Carl and Barry Moore – into the first member-versus-member primary of the 2024 election. Moore currently represents the 2nd District. Both men were first elected to Congress in 2020 and have sought to position themselves as the true conservative in the contest.

North Carolina’s open seats draw multiple contenders: The five open seats in the Tar Heel State have attracted a raft of Republican contenders. Fourteen candidates, for instance, are running in the GOP primary for exiting Rep. Wiley Nickel’s redrawn 13th District seat. Multiple candidates also are vying for the open seats now held by exiting Democratic Reps. Kathy Manning and Jeff Jackson, who is running for state attorney general.

Read more about the primaries in Alabama and North Carolina.

The caucus sites in Utah are getting ready to open — on a night, and in a state, where Nikki Haley could see one of her best showings to date.

It’s still an uphill battle for her to win the Utah Caucuses, but there are some factors that are helping. The Republican governor, Spencer Cox, has said he likes Haley as a candidate — though he’s not formally endorsed her.

Meanwhile, the governor’s wife, Abby Cox, and Utah’s Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, have endorsed Haley.

The years-long animus between Donald Trump and Sen. Mitt Romney could also pull Utah voters away from the former president. And Trump has previously received less support in Utah than he has in other red states. He lost the 2016 Utah Caucuses, handily, to Ted Cruz.  

Another interesting dynamic tonight will be the physical turnout at the caucus sites. A former Republican state chair told CNN, the state Republican Party opted to return to a caucus format this year, in order to spark more in-person voter turnout. 

In 2020, the Republicans held it as a primary, with only mail-in voting.

At the caucus site at Alta High School in Sandy, 32 precincts will be holding caucuses in 32 different rooms. People arrive and check in at 6 p.m. local time (8:00 p.m. ET). The caucusing starts at 7 p.m. local (9 p.m. ET). The vote counting starts at 8 p.m. local time (10 p.m. ET).

At one of the busiest polling sites in East El Paso, Texas, a vast majority of Republicans are saying they are sticking with former President Donald Trump.

This Super Tuesday’s primary comes as the Texas Republican Party finds itself in a civil war. Trump has injected himself into a number of state legislative races. There are tense divisions between the Bush-era Republicans, which Nikki Haley represents, and the Trump MAGA wing.

So, the question tonight will be just how much influence does Trump have over down ballot Texas Republicans.

Immigration is also a key issue Republican voters keep bringing up. It will be interesting to see how Republicans perform with Latino voters in border communities and how Trump performs with suburban voters in the biggest urban areas.

Finally, El Paso is a heavily Democratic stronghold where a large number of Democratic voters are casting ballots for President Joe Biden, but the enthusiasm level is way down.

In fact, early voting turnout is down almost 3% statewide and that is almost entirely on the Democratic side of the voting totals.

Tonight, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump agree on one thing: The general election campaign is finally underway and dramatically accelerating this week, bookended by results of Super Tuesday and the State of the Union address on Thursday.

For Biden and the White House, “it can’t come soon enough,” in the words of one top adviser, who expressed frustration that fears of a Trump comeback have not yet changed the race dynamic. For the last 50 days – since Trump’s triumph in Iowa – the Biden campaign has been unable to get the Democratic base to rally around the president.

“Our job is to remind voters of just who Donald Trump is,” a second Biden adviser said, pledging that the contrast is about to become far sharper as the campaign pivots to the general election.

The Trump campaign intends to keep making this race “all about Biden,” an adviser said, and tonight aides are looking to the suburbs of Minneapolis and battleground of North Carolina – among other places – for signs of Nikki Haley’s strength and the work needed to unify the GOP.

For the next 245 days, this adviser said: “It’s finally going to be Trump vs. Biden.”

President Joe Biden will win the Virginia Democratic primary, CNN projects.  

There were 99 pledged delegates at stake in the contest.  

In 2020, Biden also won the state’s Democratic primary. 

It’s 7 p.m. ET and polls are closing across Vermont and Virginia.

Nikki Haley is not planning to make any public remarks tonight and she has not promised to keep her campaign alive after today’s results have been tallied – a tactic that is very different than her approach to previous primary contests.

Before the Iowa caucus, Haley’s campaign was pointing to the competition turning into a two-person race between Haley and former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire.

Before the New Hampshire primary Haley clearly stated her intention to go onto compete in her home state of South Carolina, and her campaign put out a memo pointing to “fertile ground” in super Tuesday states.

And days before the South Carolina primary, Haley gave a speech where she committed to campaigning in Michigan and competing through Super Tuesday no matter the results. Her campaign had also already scheduled rallies in Super Tuesday states.

Ahead of today, Haley did not set those same expectations. There was no campaign event, no campaign memo laying out the path ahead and no campaign manager call with reporters claiming that Haley isn’t going anywhere. Haley will monitor the results in her home state of South Carolina, where voters are not even voting. 

Tonight is very different than the previous contests, given the sheer number of states voting which means there is a lot of information for the campaign to digest, a campaign official pointed out. 

Still, in the last week Haley has repeatedly said she has not thought beyond Super Tuesday, citing the importance of allowing voters in more than a dozen states that vote today to have their voices heard.

None of this definitively means that Haley won’t keep her campaign alive or add events to her schedule in states that vote next week — but it does mean that tonight’s results will dictate what her campaign does next.

Voters in North Carolina were focused on key issues as they headed to the polls to make their primary choices on Tuesday.

In Cornelius, a more affluent lake community outside of Charlotte, those turning up to cast their ballot cited their views on abortion, education, democracy and immigration as the reasons behind their vote. 

North Carolina could have the power in November to sway the race for president. The crucial swing state’s importance goes beyond the top of the ticket though — North Carolina has a long ballot full of competitive races.

One of them is the nation’s most closely watched gubernatorial race, which will likely end up being between frontrunners Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general who has raised millions of dollars, and Mark Robinson, the state’s controversial lieutenant governor. Robinson brings with him an endorsement from Donald Trump, but also a long list of inflammatory statements and right-wing positions that some Republicans worry will hurt him in the general election. 

Former President Donald Trump’s team is aware that he won’t cross the delegate threshold to become the presumptive Republican nominee tonight, but the hope is that he secures enough delegates to ensure he does meet that milestone as early as next Tuesday, March 12.

Trump’s campaign is also hoping that a definitive win tonight will effectively force his lone GOP rival, Nikki Haley, to drop out of the race. While keenly aware that Haley had only pledged to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, Trump’s campaign is also not operating under an assumption that Haley will drop out, having already pivoted their focus to a general election. 

Publicly, Trump followed the campaign’s shift to focus on President Joe Biden, but privately the former president has continued to complain that Haley has remained in the race, arguing that she is stopping the Republican Party from fully getting behind Trump. 

As Trump’s campaign looks to a general election rematch with Biden, tonight’s results could help shape where and how they will spend resources. Trump advisers indicated they would look at several key data points out of Super Tuesday – including how suburban voters in red and purple states cast their ballots and what Republican turnout looks like, which will serve as a reference point for the party’s enthusiasm around this election. 

One thing the Trump team knows – every single vote counts in a rematch with Biden, and they aren’t taking anything for granted.

Donald Trump might be on the hunt for delegates tonight, but he’s already secured support from the majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill — another key barometer of his grip on the GOP.

Over half of the Senate GOP conference has endorsed Trump, including Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican who has expressed concern about Trump’s viability as a general election candidate. And across the Capitol, well over half the House Republican conference is backing Trump, including the entire House GOP leadership team. 

One key Republican who hasn’t endorsed him yet is Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, whose relationship has soured with the former president since January 6, 2021. But McConnell is expected to back whoever the presumptive nominee is — even if it’s Trump.

And in a sign of just how enthusiastic — and confident — Republicans are about Trump’s march to the nomination: Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 3 Senate Republican, told CNN that he called Trump this morning to “congratulate him in advance” of his expected performance on Super Tuesday.

It’s a remarkable turnaround from just a few years ago when Trump left Washington in disgrace and many were skeptical about his future in the party.

The economy may be looming large for many Californians as they cast their ballots on Tuesday.

The past year has seen a slowdown in the tech-focused Bay Area and two prolonged Hollywood strikes, resulting in an uptick in layoffs in the state. According to the latest government data from December, California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. The state has a 5.1% unemployment rate, far outpacing the nationwide unemployment rate, which was 3.7% in January. Only one state, Nevada, has a higher unemployment rate than California. The state’s labor force has also been steadily shrinking since September.

However, California’s economy, the largest in the US, has grown at a relatively healthy pace. The state’s real GDP grew at a 4.8% annual pace in the third quarter of 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The state ranks No. 22 out of all 50 states when it comes to real GDP growth.

President Joe Biden raised at least $42 million for his reelection campaign and the Democratic Party in February, campaign officials told CNN, a total fueled by the strongest month of grassroots donations during this election cycle – which campaign officials say demonstrates an under-appreciated level of enthusiasm for the president.

Biden campaign officials told CNN that last month’s grassroots fundraising included nearly $2 million in donations on the final day of the month. That marked the campaign’s second strongest grassroots fundraising day of the cycle so far, following the official launch of the Biden reelection operation on April 25. CNN was the first to report on the figures.

The president and his team have been fighting off concerns about a lack of enthusiasm around his reelection, with recent polls showing voters’ worries about his age and key issues like the economy.

The Biden campaign had raised more than $42 million in January and had ended that month with $130 million on hand — the biggest figure amassed by a Democratic presidential candidate at that point in the election cycle.

North Carolina’s unemployment rate was 3.6% in December 2023, ranked 31st in the country. The North Carolina commerce department touted “remarkable progress” on a balanced labor market in 2023, saying job openings in the state are beginning to approach pre-pandemic levels.

The state’s economy grew 4.6% in the third quarter of 2023 (in contrast, neighboring South Carolina grew 5.7%). North Carolina gained about 99,000 jobs in 2023, with a growth rate of 2%. 

Though North Carolina may best be known for its historic furniture and tobacco industries, the state has a diverse economy, from Charlotte’s metropolitan financial center, food processing and agriculture, to information technology in the Raleigh-Durham area. 

Texas outpaced the nation — and almost every other state — in economic and employment growth in 2023. Jobs were added in practically every sector (minus the high-tech sector, which shed positions across the US after bulking up during the pandemic).

And last year was a historic one for the Lone Star State, which set new records for the number of Texans working as well as the overall size of its labor force, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Here’s a look at some of the numbers:

A key driver behind that history-making effort: Texas continued to be a destination for both people and businesses.

Texas was the third fastest-growing state in the US during 2023, Census data shows, and that helped fuel infrastructure and real estate projects; hiring in education, healthcare, leisure and hospitality; and spur additional private (Tesla and Samsung, to name two) and public investments in the advanced manufacturing space, Wells Fargo economists wrote in December.

Still, like many other states, Texas felt the crunch of high interest rates coupled with decreasing affordability. The number of homes sold in 2023 was the smallest since 2016, while the median sales price was just shy of 2022’s all-time high, according to Texas A&M University’s Texas Real Estate Research Center.

In 2024, economic and employment growth are expected to continue slow and return to pre-pandemic trend levels, a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economist projected last month. The state is expected to see employment growth of 2%, but a recent upswing in inflation across the state and falling sales tax revenue highlight potential near-term pain points, the Dallas Fed noted in its economic outlook. Additionally, the regional Fed noted that Texas firms’ growing concerns entering the year were related to geopolitical uncertainty as well as the upcoming US general election.

Vermont, one of the several states holding its presidential primary election on Super Tuesday, hasn’t supported a Republican in a general election since Ronald Regan’s reelection in 1988.

Former President Donald Trump is on a mission to rack up delegates on his way to his party’s nomination. His GOP rival Nikki Haley, however, is still in the race and is pitching herself as a better alternative to Trump — arguing that most Americans don’t want another rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden in November.

Moderate Republicans have had some success at the state level, including holding the governorship since 2016. GOP Gov. Phil Scott won reelection in 2022 with a large majority of the vote.

But as the Trump and Biden look toward November, it’s important to keep in mind Biden received about 66% of the vote in Vermont during the 2020 presidential election over Trump.

Here’s what else to know about the primaries:

The Democratic district attorney in Harris County, Texas, is raising alarms about voting procedures after she was turned away from the polls early Tuesday morning because her ballot had already been cast.

In a statement posted on X, Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said that district attorney Kim Ogg’s life partner — with whom the district attorney shares an address — had inadvertently cast a ballot in Ogg’s name during early voting last week.

Ogg, whose name is on Tuesday’s primary ballot, successfully voted later Tuesday, but she told CNN that the incident raises questions about how it happened in the first place, whether similar mistakes have affected voters in the same household and whether local election officials have a system to track such errors.

Ogg and her partner, Olivia Jordan, do not share a last name, and each had to present identification to vote.

“I’m the top law enforcement official in the third-biggest jurisdiction in the nation,” Ogg said in a telephone interview. “If it can happen to the district attorney, it can happen to anyone.”

An official in the Harris County clerk’s office said the issue had been resolved and the clerk would not have a further statement.

In North Carolina, 74 Republican delegates are at stake in tonight’s primary election. Here’s the breakdown of education rates, the rural population and income levels across the Tar Heel State.

As Donald Trump’s team expects him to cruise through Super Tuesday, the former president is hoping to extinguish any hope for GOP challenger Nikki Haley’s campaign.

Trump and his allies have been irritated by how the conversation has often turned from his victory on previous election nights to the slice of the Republican Party that has opted for another candidate, highlighting concerns about how he’d fare in a general election with his weaknesses. 

“He lost 40% of the primary vote in all of the early states,” Haley told supporters in recent days, referencing Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. “You can’t win the general election if you can’t win that 40 percent.”

But as the race nationalizes and focuses on states where she hasn’t campaigned as intensively, Trump’s team is hoping that narrative will change tonight. 

While Republicans have carried North Carolina in 10 of the last 12 presidential elections, the final results in 2020 were close — Donald Trump eked out a victory, winning the state with 49.9% of the vote to Joe Biden’s 48.6%. 

The results from four years ago set the stage for the 2024 presidential primary elections on Tuesday where those same candidates are once again facing each other.

Aside from the presidential race, North Carolina voters will also be casting their ballots in the gubernatorial race. The Democratic primary for governor includes Attorney Gen. Josh Stein and former state Supreme Court justice Mike Morgan, while controversial Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is the highest profile Republican candidate. 

Congressional races in 2024: North Carolina’s congressional map has been the subject of numerous lawsuits over the years. After the 2020 census, the Republican-controlled state legislature drew an aggressively gerrymandered map which the state Supreme Court struck down and replaced with a more balanced one.

However, after Republicans took control of the court in the 2022 elections the court reversed its decision, allowing the legislature to draw a new map, which could help the GOP pick up at least three seats in 2024. 

President Joe Biden will win the Iowa Democratic mail-in caucus after finishing fourth in the state four years ago. 

Who won in 2016 and 2020: Hillary Clinton won in 2016; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the narrow winner in 2020. In both races, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders finished a close second. 

A steady stream of voters filed into Cornelius Town Hall on Tuesday, about 45 minutes north of Charlotte, to cast their votes.

Some said they voted for Nikki Haley today, but plan to vote for President Joe Biden in November. Others were looking forward to another term for Donald Trump as president.

Beverly Klyn, a registered unaffiliated voter, chose to vote as a Republican today. As a senior, she said she is somewhat offended that some people suggest President Joe Biden is too old.

“I find him more wise,” she said. “And the people he surrounds himself with are very knowledgeable and give him advice.” 

Today, she cast a ballot for Nikki Haley. She described it as a protest vote against Trump. 

“I think the choice is there – democracy or autocracy,” she told CNN. “There’s no choice, it’s democracy.”

Brian Nelson had a similar strategy. He said he dislikes some of Trump’s policies and rhetoric, so he voted for his competitor.

“​​Republicans deserve a better choice and I think that’s Nikki Haley,” he said. But Nelson said he plans to vote for Biden come November.

Some registered Republicans who spoke with CNN cast a ballot for Trump.

“He’s the only man who can help us as a county and bring everything back the way it should be – a normal day-to-day living for all Americans,” said Dennis Strickland.

He said he had no concerns about voting for Trump amid his numerous criminal charges. Strickland said his top concern is securing the southern border, saying that “if we don’t, we’re going to lose our country.”

Fellow Republican Phil Maher agreed. He also voted for Trump today.

“I like his policies,” he told CNN. “I liked him when he was in office. It works for me.”

Four years after he became the Democratic face of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, California Rep. Adam Schiff has become the front-runner for a new role: US senator.

Ahead of the state’s open primary Tuesday, Schiff has maintained a small but steady lead in the polls, raised the most money and spent more than $30 million on ads. He has the backing of much of the party establishment in the state, including 75% of California’s Democratic US House delegation, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former US Sen. Barbara Boxer.

And the most prominent Republican in the race, a former baseball player who has not aired a single TV ad, just might have enough party support to make it to the general election, thanks in part to ads Schiff has aired calling him “too conservative.”

More about the primary: Under California’s primary system, all candidates run on the same ballot with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advancing to November. In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1, Tuesday’s result could either set up a grueling Democrat-on-Democrat battle in the fall or put one of the three Democratic members of the House on a fast track to the Senate.

“We’re working like we are last place,” Schiff said of his campaign in an interview with CNN. “My view is you run scared or run unopposed.”

A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll found that 24% of likely primary voters said they supported Schiff, 19% said they supported US Rep. Katie Porter, 18% were behind Republican Steve Garvey, a former Los Angeles Dodgers star, and 10% backed US Rep. Barbara Lee. Eric Early, a Republican businessman who did not qualify for any of the race’s three debates, was supported by 4% of respondents.

Read more about California’s Senate race.

Donald Trump is juggling a busy court and campaign schedule as he defends himself in several criminal cases while also vying for a second term in the White House.

The former president’s first criminal trial will take place later this month in a courtroom in New York, where he faces charges stemming from his alleged falsification of business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign.

The trial start date in Trump’s classified documents case in Florida had been set for late May, but the judge overseeing that case revisited the timing of the trial during a key hearing on March 1. She has not yet set a new date for the trial.

Nearly two-thirds of North Carolina primary voters say that they’d consider former President Donald Trump fit for the presidency if he’s convicted of a crime, according to the initial results of CNN’s exit poll of Republican primary voters in the state, with slightly over half of GOP primary voters in Virginia saying the same.

Roughly 4 in 10 primary voters in North Carolina describe themselves as part of the MAGA, or “Make America Great Again,” movement, compared to about one-third in Virginia. That’s below the 46% in Iowa’s caucuses who identified with the MAGA slogan. In South Carolina, about 41% of GOP primary voters described themselves as identifying with MAGA, with about one-third of New Hampshire GOP primary voters saying the same.

Exit polls are a valuable tool to help understand primary voters’ demographic profile and political views. Like all surveys, however, exit polls are estimates, not precise measurements of the electorate. That’s particularly true for the preliminary set of exit poll numbers, which haven’t yet been weighted to match the final results of the primaries. But the results provide a glimpse of the type of voters turning out to participate.

Tennessee voters are headed to the polls today for the state’s presidential primaries.

Here’s what to know about voting and the primary:

The Volunteer State has become a Republican stronghold in recent presidential elections. Donald Trump won the state by 23 points in 2020 and 26 points in 2016. The GOP has now carried Tennessee in nine of the last 12 presidential contests, with the only Democratic victories being from Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Despite a deep history of political divide that dates back to the Civil War, Tennessee has begun to mirror other deep red southern states with Democratic strength limited almost exclusively to major cities: especially Memphis and Nashville, which is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country.

Democrats also have some strength in the smaller cities of Knoxville, home to the University of Tennessee, and Chattanooga. 

Republicans perform better in the suburbs and then run up the score in more rural areas.

Winning individual primaries and caucuses is just one step in the long path to winning a party’s presidential nomination. Both parties hold conventions in the summer where delegates technically select the nominee. The process and rules are different for each party, but the primaries are about winning enough delegates to secure the nomination.

For the GOP, former President Donald Trump has a strong early lead after winning the most delegates in the early nominating contests. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will ultimately need to find a way to start winning contests if she’s going to eat into Trump’s growing delegate lead.

Winning the GOP nomination requires at least 1,215 out of 2,429 delegates awarded as part of the primary process. During Super Tuesday on March 5, a consequentially large number of Republican delegates is at stake.

Below, explore how many delegates are up for grabs in every primary contest:

Read more about how Republicans choose a nominee.

Immigration has been a top-of-mind issue for many voters across the country as they head to the polls in the presidential primary contests.

Last week, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, made dueling trips to the US-Mexico border. They were about 300 miles away from each other — and slammed each other’s immigration policies.

Biden has criticized Republicans for killing a bipartisan border deal that was squashed in the Senate in February, in large part due to opposition from Trump. At the same time, the former president has made Biden’s handling of illegal immigration a centerpiece of his reelection effort and leaned into scare tactics.

As immigration shapes up to be a dominant issue in the presidential race — in the primaries and beyond — here are a few key things to know about the political landscape in Texas:

There are 161 Republican delegates and 244 Democratic delegates at stake in Tuesday’s primary.

In the Republican corner: a right-wing firebrand with a loyal following to match the loathing of partisan rivals. For the Democrats: a moderate with a diverse coalition of support, promising to safeguard democracy and what remains of state abortion protections.

The race to become the next governor of North Carolina is likely to mirror the choice facing voters on their presidential tickets in November. Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein are the heavy favorites in their respective Super Tuesday primaries to make the fall ballot, as are former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

Key battleground state: North Carolina is once again shaping up to be a crucial battleground in 2024. Biden and Democrats are hoping to flip the state, which Trump narrowly won in 2020, while also keeping a grasp on power in Raleigh by passing the torch from term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper to Stein.

Stein is viewed by many as a rising star and the party’s last best hope to slow, if not stop, state Republicans’ march. Few US electorates are as narrowly divided as North Carolina’s, where a Republican legislative supermajority — clinched not by voters, but with a turncoat legislator’s dramatic defection to the GOP last year — has been in constant conflict with Cooper over issues ranging from the state’s new 12-week abortion ban to taxes and regulations.

There is not expected to be too much drama on Tuesday when both parties go to the polls for their primaries. Stein is the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, while Biden is expected to sweep the delegates without any Michigan-style drama. On the Republican side, Trump is again a shoo-in for his third consecutive presidential primary victory in the state, and Robinson is polling ahead of his two rivals for the GOP gubernatorial nod.

Read more about the governor’s race in this key battleground state.

In many of the 16 states holding primary contests on Super Tuesday, any registered voter can take part in either primary. They are “open primaries” in which Republicans can choose to vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa.

In some others, like North Carolina and the Democratic contest in California, registered party members and independent voters – those not registered with a party – can take part.

But there are four states that still feature closed primaries, at least on the Republican side: Alaska, California, Oklahoma and Utah. A person can often register for the party at his or her polling place or caucus site.

No two states are alike, obviously, but comparing former President Donald Trump’s margins in these closed primary states with the ones with open primaries could be an interesting exercise, especially since independent voters hold so much power in general elections in US politics.

Here’s a look at how independents and others who don’t identify with either major party voted according to exit polls in the first three states of the 2024 primary calendar, all of which were won by Trump. Voters were asked which party they identify with. You’ll notice that he only won independent voters in Iowa, where a person had to register to take part in the caucuses.

One thing I will be looking for Tuesday night is how Trump does among independent voters in those states with open primaries compared with the ones with closed primaries.

In Alabama, 50 Republican delegates are at stake in tonight’s primary election. Here’s the breakdown of education rates, the rural population and income levels across the Heart of Dixie.

Utah Republicans have opted to have party-run caucuses to allocate delegates rather than participate in the state-run party.

While Republicans and Democrats have used different processes in recent cycles, in 2020 both parties participated in the state-run primary. 

Republican caucuses will open at 9 p.m. ET and voters can drop off ballots until 11 p.m. ET. Polls in the Democratic primary will close at 10 p.m. ET

Both party’s methods will allocate delegates to candidates, but there are some key differences between primaries and caucuses:

Winning the GOP nomination requires at least 1,215 out of 2,429 delegates awarded as part of the primary process.

On Super Tuesday, a consequentially large number of Republican delegates are at stake.

In 13 primaries and three caucuses, 874 delegates, 36% of the Republican total, will be up for grabs, including in California, the state with the most Republican delegates. But we still aren’t even halfway through the primaries.

Read more about how Republicans chose a nominee.

Central to the fight for control of the House chamber is California. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to flip the House, and in California alone, the party is targeting seven GOP-held seats.

Here’s what to know about the key down-ballot races happening in the state Tuesday:

Keep reading about other key down-ballot primaries in state on Super Tuesday.

President Joe Biden “will be kept updated,” throughout the evening as Super Tuesday primary results come in, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.  

“I have not spoken to him about his plans tonight. Obviously, he will be kept updated, and he’ll be aware of what’s going on tonight as we see elections happening across the country. I just don’t have anything specific,” she said during the White House press briefing.

Biden returned to the White House from Camp David Tuesday, where he spent the weekend huddled with advisers ahead of Thursday’s State of the Union Address. 

The president has remained out of sight during primary election nights so far this year, foregoing the traditional victory remarks for paper statements from his campaign following primary wins in South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan.

In Tennessee, 58 Republican delegates are at stake in tonight’s primary election. Here’s the breakdown of education rates, the rural population and income levels across the Volunteer State.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, announced Tuesday she will retire at the end of her term this year.

She blamed growing partisanship and mudslinging in Washington for driving her decision to not run for reelection, only a few weeks after the Senate rejected the bipartisan, negotiated compromise on immigration policy that she had worked on for months.

“Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year,” she said in a video Tuesday. 

“I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now,” Sinema continued. “Despite modernizing our infrastructure, ensuring clean water, delivering good jobs and safer communities, Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners.”

“It’s all or nothing, the outcome less important than beating the other guy,” she added. “Compromise is a dirty word.”

As voters flocked to Nuckols Farm Elementary School in Richmond on Tuesday to participate in the state’s primary, several Republican voters told CNN they struggled with the prospect of another presidential election featuring President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Doug Moran, who referred to himself as “a recovering Republican,” said he was “a diehard Republican until Trump took over the party.”

Moran, who voted for former South Carolina Governor Nikky Haley on Tuesday, called her an “outstanding candidate.” He said that, in a potential Trump vs. Biden rematch, “I’ll hold my nose and vote for Biden again.” 

Deborah O’Connor Bird, 74, and Anthony Bird, 75, both voted for Haley, despite having previously voted for Trump in the past.

“I like her a lot, and I think she’s got a good record, and I think she’s got the best chance of winning in November,” Anthony Bird said. 

Asked about who they would support if Trump were to become the GOP nominee, Deborah Bird said, “We’re going to move.”

“If he becomes the nominee, it’s gonna be a terrible decision,” Anthony Bird added. “I can’t see any Democrats solving the problems. And I can’t see Donald Trump solving the problems. That’s what I think Nikki Haley has got some some chance.”

Today is Super Tuesday, and with contests in 16 states and one US territory, it’s the biggest day of presidential primaries this year.

On the Republican side, 865 delegates are at stake in 15 states, more than a third of the total number of delegates who will attend the national convention. Former President Donald Trump is hoping to establish a commanding lead in the delegate count, while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will try to slow his march to the nomination. It takes 1,215 delegates to win the Republican nomination at the convention in July, a number Trump won’t be able to reach on Tuesday. 

On the Democratic side, 1,420 delegates are up for grabs in 15 states and American Samoa. While President Joe Biden isn’t facing any major competition, he also won’t be able to win enough delegates Tuesday to secure the nomination. In several states, including Minnesota, North Carolina and Colorado, voters will have the option to vote “uncommitted” or “no preference.”

These are the states and territories holding primary contests today:

Access the full 2024 election calendar.

North Carolinians are navigating new rules as they vote on Super Tuesday, and election officials say balloting so far is going smoothly in this battleground state.

The primary marks the first statewide election in the Tar Heel State in which photo identification is required to cast a ballot, and Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said most voters appear to have received the message.

Only 216 of the roughly 695,000 people who voted early were required to cast provisional ballots for “reasons related to photo ID requirements,” Brinson Bell told reporters Tuesday. The full list of acceptable forms of ID can be found here but include a driver’s license, US passport and a North Carolina photo ID card issued by the state motor vehicle agency.

Additionally, under a new state law, most mail-in ballots must be received by 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to be counted. Lawmakers last fall eliminated a three-day grace period for those ballots to arrive at local election offices. In the 2020 primary election, a little more than 4,000 absentee-by-mail ballots were received by county boards of elections during the three days after the election and were counted. 

A longer grace period remains in place for absentee ballots coming from overseas and military voters. Those will be accepted if received by March 14.

As of early Tuesday morning, a little more than 25,400 requested absentee-by-mail ballots had not yet been returned, state officials told CNN.  

Brinson Bell said those with outstanding absentee ballots have two remaining options if they still want to vote: They need to drop them off at their county board of election offices by 7:30 p.m. today or they can discard their absentee ballots and vote in person today at their assigned Election Day voting location.

North Carolina could prove a consequential state in this year’s presidential election, and it features a high-profile gubernatorial race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

CNN’s Ali Main contributed to this report.

The last Republican to carry Minnesota in a presidential general election was Richard Nixon in 1972, making this the longest Democratic streak of any state in the nation (Washington DC not included).

Take a look at how the state has voted in the recent past:

However, Minnesota can be more unpredictable in non-presidential races: At one point, it elected liberal Paul Wellstone and conservative Rod Grams to Senate and independent Jesse Ventura to the governorship — all within a few years of each other in the 1990s.

In California, 169 Republican delegates are at stake in tonight’s primary election. Here’s the breakdown of education rates, the rural population and income levels across the Golden State.

Taylor Swift on Tuesday encouraged her supporters to vote in the presidential primaries on Super Tuesday, including in her adopted home state of Tennessee.

“Today, March 5, is the Presidential primary in Tennessee and 16 other states and territories,” said Swift, who has a home in Tennessee.

“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power. If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today,” Swift wrote on her Instagram story. “Whether you’re in Tennessee or somewhere else in the US, check your polling places and times at vote.org.”

The pop star, who is currently in Singapore on the international leg of her Eras Tour, is registered to vote in Tennessee. She voted by mail in the state’s primary, a source familiar tells CNN

Swift has more than 282 million followers on Instagram. She endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020 but has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate this cycle.

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

The Alaska Republican party-run primary will consist of a presidential preference poll held at various locations around the state.

Alaska Democrats will hold a party-run mail primary ending on April 6. The party expects to report results no later than the evening of April 7. Their primary will use a ranked-choice voting system where if the voter selects a candidate who gets less than 15% of the vote in the first round, their vote will be redistributed to the next candidate they ranked who met that threshold.

November will be Alaska’s first presidential election held under ranked-choice voting, where voters can rank up to four candidates in order of preference.

Elections for other offices in Alaska also use a top-four open primary system, where candidates from all parties appear on the same primary ballot and voters select one. The top four then advance to a ranked-choice general election.

Ranked-choice voting delivered Alaska’s first woman and native Alaskan to the House in a 2022 special election when Democrat Mary Peltola was elected to finish the late GOP Rep. Don Young’s term. She won a full term in November 2022.

In presidential politics, Alaska is a safe state for Republicans.

President Joe Biden chastised the media for only focusing on polls showing him trailing former President Donald Trump, insisting a number of surveys showed him ahead. 

“The last five polls, you guys don’t report, I’m winning,” he said at Hagerstown airport in Maryland. “Five in a row,” he said, adding the media “only look at the New York Times,” which he called a “great paper.”

It wasn’t clear which polls Biden was referencing. A CNN Poll of Polls shows no clear leader in the race, with Trump at 48% and Biden at 46% in the latest average.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to join a national organizing call on Saturday.

The call will include campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, other campaign officials and “special guests,” the campaign said.

“Join supporters from across the country to get the inside scoop on our campaign’s roadmap to victory in 2024 and learn more about how you can play a pivotal role in our campaign throughout the month of March. You won’t want to miss this event,” the campaign said.  

The event is virtual at 4:00 p.m. ET. 

Maine became the first state in 2020 to use ranked-choice voting in a presidential race. The state adopted ranked-choice voting for the first time in the 2018 midterm elections.

In ranked-choice voting, voters rank the general election candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the first choice votes, the candidate with the least support is eliminated, and those voters’ second choice are redistributed among the remaining candidates. This process continues until only two candidates remain, and the candidate with the most votes is declared the winner.

While Maine Democrats will use the ranked-choice voting results to allocate delegates at the point that each remaining candidate has crossed 15% of the vote, Maine Republicans are going to ignore the ranked-choice tabulation and only count voters’ first choices.

Maine’s 2018 midterms marked the first time in US history that ranked-choice voting determined a congressional race. In the 2nd District, Republican incumbent Rep. Bruce Poliquin led Democrat Jared Golden by a narrow margin, 46.3% to 45.6%, on the first ballot, but both candidates failed to capture a majority.

After the ranked-choice tabulation, Golden overtook Poliquin with 50.6% of the vote, thereby flipping the House seat.

She’s won just a single contest so far – the primary in Washington, DC – but former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley still thinks she has a role to play in the Republican primary.

Haley told NBC News she would stay in the race “as long as we’re competitive” with front-runner former President Donald Trump.

While the primary process is still in its relatively early stages and primaries continue until June, the hard truth facing Haley is that with each passing contest dominated by Trump, her odds of amassing a sizable cache of delegates shrink.

A little more than a third of Republican delegates are up for grabs in 15 Republican contests across the country on Super Tuesday. In many of them, Haley could get locked out of delegates entirely if she can’t beat Trump at either the statewide or congressional district level.

See how Haley’s delegate path is full of obstacles unless she can start winning primaries:

In Texas, 161 Republican delegates are at stake in tonight’s primary election. Here’s the breakdown of education rates, the rural population and income levels across the Lone Star State.

President Joe Biden offered a Super Tuesday message to the Black community, framing the election as a split-screen with his likely opponent, former President Donald Trump, as he continues to draw contrasts heading into the general election. 

“Think of the alternative, folks. If we lose this election, you’re going to be back with Donald Trump,” Biden said during a radio appearance taped at Camp David Monday that aired Tuesday on on K104 in Dallas, Texas. “The way he talked about, the way he acted, the way he dealt with African American community, I think has been shameful.”

Biden highlighted his accomplishments aimed at the Black community and Americans more broadly: efforts to bolster HBCUs, student loan debt forgiveness, access to small business capital, access to housing, health care, job creation, lowering the price of insulin, replacing lead pipes, improving internet access, the appointment of a Black Supreme Court Justice and Black circuit court judges, and police reform.

He also offered a brief preview of his priorities if given a second term — cracking down on corporate taxes and bolstering childcare. In 2024, he said, “democracy, freedom, economic opportunity” are at stake.

Since the beginning of February, more money has been spent on ads for the California Senate race than the presidential race.

At $71.3 million, California’s Senate race has seen more ad spending than any non-presidential 2024 contest so far, excluding future reservations.

The next closest is the Ohio Senate race which has drawn about $29.2 million in ad spending so far.

For comparison, the last two Senate primaries in California – albeit with incumbents – drew far less in ad spending; about $4.2 million in 2018, when the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein was seeking reelection; and just over $6 million in 2022, when Sen. Alex Padilla was seeking his first full term, having been appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 to replace Vice President Kamala Harris. 

The key question entering the race to fill the seat once held by the late Sen. Feinstein is whether the general election will feature two Democrats or one.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff appears poised to claim one of the spots on the November ballot and would prefer to take on Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star, rather than fellow Democratic Rep. Katie Porter.

Schiff’s campaign has run ads elevating Garvey as “too conservative” in hopes of getting a more favorable matchup in the deep-blue state. 

No Republican has carried Massachusetts in a presidential election since Ronald Reagan narrowly defeated Walter Mondale in 1984. Democrats also dominate in the state legislature and congressional delegation.

But four of the state’s five elected governors before incumbent Democrat Maura Healey were Republicans, who typically governed as moderates.

Healey, who was elected in 2022, made history as the commonwealth’s first elected female governor and first openly gay governor. Healy and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek are the nation’s only openly lesbian governors.

Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Massachusetts by more than 33 points in 2020, outperforming Clinton’s showing in 2016.

There are 40 Republican delegates and 92 Democratic delegates at stake in Massachusetts today.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley remained defiant in defending her campaign after Donald Trump said Tuesday morning she had “no path” to the nomination.

“I don’t know why everybody is so adamant that they have to follow Trump’s lead to get me out of this race. You know, all of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard,” she said in an interview with Fox News.

Though Haley has made appeals to independent voters in states with open primaries, she pushed back on the notion that she’s counting on independent and some Democratic voters to bolster her campaign.

Pointing to South Carolina, where “less than 5% of the people that voted for me were Democrats,” she said, people showing up at her rallies are “not anti-anything,” but “pro-America.”

This weekend, Haley suggested she was no longer bound by the Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge to support the eventual nominee. However, she told Fox News, she wasn’t flip-flopping. “I didn’t waffle on that,” she said. “That’s not a decision I have to make today. The convention isn’t until July. We’ve got 16 states voting today and so we want those 16 states to vote.”

However, the former South Carolina governor reiterated that she would not run on a No Labels third-party ticket “because I am a Republican, and that’s who I’ve always been.”

At one point or another, voters in 42 different states have cast ballots in a presidential primary or caucus on a Super Tuesday. Sixteen of those states are holding elections today — the most since 2008, when two dozen states held contests on that year’s Super Tuesday.

Super Tuesday refers to the election day with the most states voting in a presidential primary season — and with the biggest prize on the presidential primary calendar. But the group of states voting on Super Tuesday fluctuates every election cycle.

While the majority of states have been included at least once, no state has voted on every single Super Tuesday.

Massachusetts and Oklahoma have held contests on 10 of the 12 Super Tuesdays, including this year. Eight states have never participated in a Super Tuesday, including New Hampshire and South Carolina, whose primaries have historically been among the first on the presidential year calendar.

In the 1980s, Super Tuesday was favored by Southern states in an attempt to steer the Democratic presidential nominee toward the political center. On Super Tuesday 1988, 13 of the 20 participating states were in the South, compared with seven of this year’s 16 Super Tuesday states.

Ad spending for Super Tuesday is significantly less than 2020 totals.

A more competitive and crowded Democratic field in 2020, which included big-spending candidates Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, saw advertising outlays in those Super Tuesday contests exceed $380 million for Democrats.

Meanwhile, Republican spending on the 2024 races as of Monday was just over $5 million.

In 2020, Bloomberg’s and Steyer’s campaigns’ ad spending amounted to more than $320 million, or nearly 85% of all Democratic spending, and more than 80% of spending overall.

A large sample of the US has contests this Super Tuesday – red states and blue states from the North, South, East and West.

A reminder that those states and territories are:

North Carolina, one of 15 states holding Republican contests Tuesday, is emerging as an early general election battleground.

The fast-growing suburbs, and college-educated voters, are in the sights of both parties as the next chapter of the campaign takes shape.

In the waning days of the primary, conversations with Nikki Haley voters offer important lessons – perhaps less so for her own candidacy than for Donald Trump, Joe Biden or even a third-party candidate.

We met Kim Brand, a retired banker, and Stacey Van Gronigen, a retired consultant, at a weekend rally in Charlotte where they watched Haley, their favorite candidate, even as they openly voiced their dread about what likely comes next.

When asked what Brand will do in November if Haley doesn’t win the primary, she replied: “Cry.”

Meanwhile, Gronigen — a two-time Trump voter — said she would vote for Trump again, if Haley was not successful.

“First time I did it with joy. Second time I did it with my nose plugged, but I’ll do it again with my nose plugged. I just can’t believe, though, that that’s what we have to choose from.”

President Joe Biden is urging Americans in states with Super Tuesday contests to get out and vote. 

“If you’re in a Super Tuesday state or territory, polls are starting to open. Now is the time to make your voice heard. Confirm your polling place at http://IWillVote.com,” he said in a post on X. 

The post has a graphic with the states and territories with contests: Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. 

Biden has also taped a pair of radio interviews that are set to air Tuesday morning.

Speaking from outside a polling place in Castle Rock, Colorado, CNN’s John Berman said nearly one million people have already voted in the state as of 5 a.m. local time (7 a.m. ET).

Berman said the main means of voting in the state is by mail or drop box, but in-person polling places will be open today.

Despite this, only a fraction of people will show up to vote in person.

Notably, former President Donald Trump has appeared on the ballot in the lead up to Super Tuesday, despite the fact the Supreme Court only handed down its finding on whether Trump could remain on the ballot ahead of the US election yesterday.

Remember: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Trump should appear on the ballot in Colorado in a decision that follows months of debate over whether the frontrunner for the GOP nomination violated the “insurrectionist clause” included in the 14th Amendment.

The court was unanimous on the idea that Trump could not be unilaterally removed from the ballot.

In 2016, Super Tuesday was the moment when Donald Trump really seized control of the Republican primary.

Trump won seven of the 11 contests that day, although he lost the largest prize, Texas.

There was still a spirited race for delegates in 2016, as opposed to this year, when Trump has won nearly every contest before Super Tuesday and has a growing delegate lead over Haley.

In 2020, Joe Biden won 10 of 14 contests on Super Tuesday.

He has not faced any serious competition from Democrats this year and is expected, as is traditional for incumbents, to win every contest Tuesday.

Tuesday marks the beginning of the end of this year’s primaries.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are expected to all but clinch a rematch of their 2020 contest eight months ahead of the November general election.

There will be contests in 16 states on this year’s Super Tuesday, with voters going to the polls in every time zone in the continental US, from Alaska and California to Colorado, Minnesota and North Carolina.

Here’s what to watch for over the day:

Read more about what to watch for throughout Super Tuesday.

The first down-ballot primaries of the year on Super Tuesday are likely to be even more consequential than the day’s presidential contests, which are unlikely to change the trajectory of the Democratic and Republican races.

On the ballot Tuesday are primaries for US Senate and governor, but it’s the primaries for the US House – where Republicans are defending a razor-thin majority – that are by far the most important for the balance of power in Washington.

Central to the fight for control of the chamber is California. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to flip the House, and in California alone, the party is targeting seven GOP-held seats. President Joe Biden would have won five of them in 2020 had the current district lines been in place, making these so-called crossover districts potential low-hanging fruit for a party looking to flip seats.

Other states holding primaries for competitive House races Tuesday include North Carolina and Texas — and, to a lesser extent, Alabama, where redistricting has created a new district that’s much more favorable to Democrats. The four states, and Arkansas, also have primaries for seats seen as safe for either party, but the nominating contests could serve as key ideological tests.

Only Texas and California have Senate primaries Tuesday. Republicans need to pick up one or two seats in the fall – depending on who wins the White House – to win the majority. The Texas race for GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s seat has taken on increased importance for Senate Democrats in what is otherwise a tough landscape for them.

North Carolina is also hosting gubernatorial primaries Tuesday in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The open-seat contest is expected to draw fierce attention in this presidential battleground state, which former President Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2020 and which Biden is hoping to flip.

Get up to speed on the key down-ballot primaries happening on Super Tuesday.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won the Republican presidential primary in Washington, DC, on Sunday, after three days of voting in the party’s only capital polling location – a downtown hotel.

Haley’s victory – her first of the primary – came on the eve of what is expected to be a decisive week in the GOP primary, as she attempts one last stand as the race turns national. Former President Donald Trump has dominated every other early nominating contest and is poised to rack up more delegates on Super Tuesday.

“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement that touted the former governor as the first woman to win a GOP presidential primary.

Haley’s victory, though a first, did not come as a major surprise. Many in Washington believed the District represented her best, and perhaps only, chance to win a primary. Trump’s hold on the capital’s GOP, which counts roughly 22,000 registered voters, has never quite reflected his dominance across the country. Trump won the primary in 2020, running uncontested, but finished third in the 2016 cycle. Haley held an event on Friday with local GOP leaders, a clear sign of optimism.

It’s an important new phase of presidential primaries when the early contests are over and voters from multiple states cast ballots in primaries timed to occur on the same date.

It’s called “Super Tuesday,” and it is important even though neither President Joe Biden nor former President Donald Trump has had to sweat the competition this year. Primaries on Tuesday may offer the final opportunity for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s quixotic and lackluster effort to challenge Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

Here’s what to expect:

Former President Donald Trump will win North Dakota’s Republican presidential caucuses, CNN projects, claiming one final boost before the campaign expands to 15 states on Super Tuesday.

It is the former president’s third straight primary victory in the state. He ran unopposed in 2020 after defeating Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich there four years earlier.

Always the favorite, Trump had the endorsement of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a former 2024 campaign rival who dropped out of the race in December before backing Trump on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. The former president is likely to collect all of the state party’s 29 delegates as he closes in on the 1,215 needed to become the presumptive GOP nominee.

North Dakota has voted for the Republican candidate in 14 consecutive presidential elections. The last Democrat to win it was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 when he routed Barry Goldwater with more than 60% of the vote nationwide. In 2020, Trump defeated Biden in the state by more than 30 points.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald Trump should appear on the ballot in Colorado in a decision that follows months of debate over whether the frontrunner for the GOP nomination violated the “insurrectionist clause” included in the 14th Amendment.

The opinion was a massive victory for Trump, vanquishing one of the many legal threats that have both plagued and animated his campaign against President Joe Biden. Though the decision has no impact on the four ongoing criminal cases that Trump is facing, including the federal election subversion case that covers some of the same conduct surrounding January 6, 2021.

The decision, which marked the first time the high court had weighed Trump’s actions on January 6, landed a day before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories, including Colorado, will hold nominating contests.

The court was unanimous on the idea that Trump could not be unilaterally removed from the ballot. But the justices were divided about how broadly the decision would sweep. A 5-4 majority said that no state could dump a federal candidate off any ballot — but four justices asserted that the court should have limited its opinion.

More context: Using the 14th Amendment to derail Trump’s candidacy has always been seen as a legal longshot, but gained significant momentum with a win in Colorado’s top court in December, on its way to the US Supreme Court. Since that decision, Trump was also removed from the ballot in Maine and Illinois.

Read more about the SCOTUS decision to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot.

President Joe Biden is bracing for an ugly November in a race against Donald Trump, suggesting that if the former president loses, he will contest the results.

“Losers who are losers are never graceful,” he said in a rare interview with New Yorker’s Evan Osnos when pressed on whether Trump would concede. “I just think that he’ll do anything to try to win. If—and when—I win, I think he’ll contest it. No matter what the result is.”

The president has repeatedly cast Trump as a “loser” on the campaign trail and at closed-door fundraisers. And in a campaign speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, earlier this year, he framed Trump as the “election denier-in-chief.”

Biden’s view is also held by many Americans: In a CNN poll conducted by SSRS out last month, just 25% of Americans say they expect Trump to accept the results if he loses in November as the Republican nominee, down from 37% in October 2020. By contrast, 76% of Americans expect that Biden would concede if he loses, similar to the 71% who said the same four years ago.  

Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 and his election lies led to a violent insurrection at the US Capitol, eventually leading to a federal election subversion case.

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she’s happy with the US Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that former President Donald Trump should appear on the Colorado 2024 ballot. 

She declined to say whether she agreed with the majority’s opinion that states cannot enforce Section 3 — the “insurrectionist clause” — against federal candidates and that Congress would need to first pass legislation. 

“I think the best way is just for the people to decide at the ballot box. We don’t want the chaos of certain states or secretaries of state saying that they like someone or don’t like someone and want to take them off the ballot,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper. 
“I trust the American people. I think at the end of the day, they will decide who they want to lead this country. And I think we should let it happen that way. So I was very happy with the Supreme Court ruling,” she added.

Haley also suggested that she would not support federal legislation ensuring someone who engages in insurrection or rebellion is barred from holding public office.