It’s all on the line tonight for Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who for weeks has pinned her campaign’s hopes on Super Tuesday as her best chance to finally pick up some momentum against former president Donald Trump.
Across 15 states, 865 delegates are up for grabs in the Super Tuesday Republican nominating contests — that’s a third of all available delegates. Fifteen states are holding GOP contests today: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia are holding primaries, while Alaska and Utah are holding caucuses.
The winner of the GOP presidential nomination will need to earn a total of 1,215 delegates. Ahead of Super Tuesday, Trump had already secured 273 delegates to Haley’s 43 delegates.
Voting is taking place across six time zones. Here’s what to expect:
Even if Trump won all of the Super Tuesday delegates, he would find himself with 1,141 delegates, meaning he will not mathematically eliminate Haley tonight.
As NR’s Jim Geraghty reports, almost all of the Super Tuesday states are “winner-take-most,” meaning they award three delegates for each congressional district won, with the rest awarded to the statewide winner.
The candidate who has won the majority of states on Super Tuesday has ultimately won the Republican nomination in each cycle since 1988, when Super Tuesday as we know it first began.
Haley notched her first primary win in Washington, D.C., on Sunday after having survived eight consecutive losses to the former president in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, the Virgin Islands, Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho — and despite her major outside benefactor, Americans for Prosperity, pulling its financial support. On Monday night, Trump once again defeated Haley, this time in North Dakota.
Ahead of her 20-point defeat in her home state last month, the Haley campaign sought to temper expectations, saying it had its sights set on a number of upcoming open or semi-open primaries on Super Tuesday. In an open primary, voters do not have to formally register with a political party ahead of Election Day in order to vote in that party’s primary. In a semi-open primary, voters who are not affiliated with a political party can choose which party’s primary they would like to participate in.
Nearly two-thirds of available Super Tuesday delegates are in states with open or semi-open primaries, including Texas, Maine, and Virginia. Haley’s campaign is eyeing several states that have a large contingent of college-educated voters, suburban voters, and independents, who tend to support Haley over Trump. Those states include Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.
Still, polls find Trump leading Haley by double digits in many of those states.
After Tuesday, there are still another 26 states and four territories that will vote, up until the final nominating contests on June 4 ahead of the Republican convention in July.
In what is perhaps a show of optimism — or a commitment to remain in the race past Super Tuesday — Haley’s campaign unveiled its Louisiana leadership team this week ahead of the state’s March 23 primary.
On the Democratic side, President Biden faces no formidable challengers. However, the progressive wing of the party has been encouraging voters in several states to vote “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
At least seven Super Tuesday states offer an “uncommitted” option, including Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Tennessee. “Listen to Michigan” organizers, who led the push for voters in the Great Lake State to cast protest votes and is now working with several other states on similar efforts, say they expect Minnesota and Massachusetts to pull in a large number of protest votes.
In Michigan, more than 101,000 “uncommitted” votes were cast. Still, Biden won the race with 81.1 percent of the vote.
The administration seems to have gotten the message: Vice President Kamala Harris recently called for an immediate six-week cease-fire in Gaza.
“Hamas claims it wants a cease-fire. Well, there is a deal on the table. And as we have said, Hamas needs to agree to that deal,” Harris said. “Let’s get a cease-fire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza.”
There are a number of down-ballot races to keep an eye on, including several races in California.
Twenty-seven candidates are jockeying for the opportunity to fill the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat. The state is holding a top-two primary, where candidates from both parties run against each other on the same ballot. Top contenders include Democratic representatives Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee, as well as Republican Steve Garvey, a former Major League Baseball player.
In San Francisco, voters will be asked to weigh in on two public-safety measures: one that would require welfare recipients to undergo drug screenings and to compel those who test positive for drugs to receive treatment, as long as it is available at no cost, in order to continue receiving public funds, and a second that would expand police powers, including by allowing officers to use drones and surveillance cameras without prior approval of the police commission, and to reduce paperwork requirements, including in use-of-force cases.
In Los Angeles, left-wing district attorney George Gascon faces eleven challengers in an open-primary race. The soft-on-crime DA previously survived two recall efforts: one within his first 100 days in office and a second in 2022. The primary will be a referendum on some of his lax policies, including decisions to abolish cash bail and to lighten sentencing guidelines for gang members.
In North Carolina, Democrats and Republicans will select their respective gubernatorial nominees on Tuesday to replace term-limited Democratic governor Roy Cooper. Democrats are looking to hold on to the seat in November to keep Republicans from reaching a trifecta, as the party already controls both chambers of the state’s legislature.
Cooper has endorsed Democratic state attorney general Josh Stein to be his successor, while the Republican front-runner, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, has won the endorsement of former president Trump.
Stein faces several primary challengers, including former North Carolina supreme court justice Michael Morgan; Tryon city councilwoman Chrelle Booker; former Princeville police chief Gary Foxx; and attorney Marcus Williams. On the Republican side, Robinson will compete against state treasurer Dale Folwell and attorney Bill Graham.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee faces a tight primary race to hold onto her seat after she lost the Houston mayoral race last year. That loss came after the release of an audio recording in which she allegedly berated staff with profanity. She was late to announcing her reelection bid, only entering the race in December.
Jackson Lee, who has served as a member of Congress for nearly 30 years, will look to survive a challenge from former Houston city councilwoman Amanda Edwards.
Over in TX-23, immigration and gun rights are expected to play a major role in Republican representative Tony Gonzales’s primary race on the border. The Texas GOP previously sanctioned Gonzales over his votes to protect same-sex marriage and to support new gun-control laws in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting in his district.
Gonzales faces challenges from former Medina County Republican Party chair Julie Clark, YouTuber Brandon Herrera, retired ICE agent Victor Avila, and retired Border Patrol agent Frank Lopez.
Statewide, Representative Colin Allred is expected to win the Democratic Senate primary to become the party’s nominee who will take on Republican Senator Ted Cruz in November.
And Governor Greg Abbott will see whether he has succeeded with his $6 million effort to unseat some of the 21 state house Republicans who voted last November to remove a school-choice provision from an education bill.
Abbott is backing ten challengers to Republican incumbents over the school-choice spat, which centered on Abbott’s proposal to make private-school scholarships available to students in failing schools.
This post will be updated as results come in.