Super Tuesday 2024: live primary election results and analysis as polls close

Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the US presidential primary season, arrives on 5 March and promises to have a decisive – if perhaps somewhat anticlimactic – impact on the respective Republican and Democratic races.

All but one of his challengers has long since fallen away, leaving only the well-funded but under-performing ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley still swinging.

She picked up a much-needed win in Washington DC’s primary on Sunday, her first of the season, beating Mr Trump by 62.3 per cent of the vote to his 33.3 per cent, scooping up 19 delegates in the process.

Her win also means we could now find ourselves with a more interesting evening indeed on Tuesday once the results begin to come rolling in.

The Democratic contest is meanwhile even more one-sided, with President Joe Biden seemingly nailed-on to be his party’s candidate again as he seeks a second term in the White House, despite concerns about his advanced age and consistently poor polling.

Nikki Haley will most certainly lose tonight’s Super Tuesday contests. The former South Carolina governor unsurprisinly won the Washington, DC primary this weekend. But tonight, she faces a much tougher go at it on Tuesday than in previous contests. But if she’s going to be even remotely competitive against Donald Trump, she will need to perform well in two regions.

Harris County, Texas and Orange County, California are historic bastions of the exact type of wealthy, college-educated voters who have fled the Republican Party since Mr Trump took over.

Ronald Reagan, the former California governor turned saint of the Repiublican Party, famously said Orange County, located just outside of Los Angeles, is where “conservatives go to die. The median income in Orange County according to the US Census is $109,361, much higher than the national $74,580 median income. In addition, almost 43 per cent of the population has at least a bachelor’s degree and 69 per cent of the population is white.

But since the Trump revolution, it’s become fertile territory for Democrats, as it voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and again for Joe Biden in 2020. Democrats have begun to flip House seats there.

That being said, some Reagan Republicans who are amenable to Ms Haley’s message of tax cuts and a robust foreign policy remain. If Haley registers at least 30 per cent in Orange County suburbs.

Voters who register no party preference cannot vote in the Republican presidential primary, meaning the independents voters who have kept Haley afloat will not be able to vote in the GOP primary.

The dynamics in Harris County are similar. Harris County, the home of Houston, is flush with cash thanks to the state’s robust oil industry. Historically the home of the Bush dynasty after a Connecticut prep named George Herbert Walker Bush made his money in the energy sector and settled and became chairman of the Harris County GOP, helping to build the Texas GOP.

The University of Houston and Rice University are located there, though 33.2% have at least a bachelor’s degree. Degree attainment is lower there at $70,789, but the suburbs have higher earners. But the suburbs remain fairly upper-class and Barack Obama began to win the suburbs of Houston and it hasn’t looked back. In the same way, Ms Haley will need to overperform. Unlike California, Texas has an open primary, which means she can probably overperform there compared to Orange County.

We’re finally here! Super Tuesday, the March Madness of presidential primaries. Except in this case, we know that Donald Trump and Joe Biden – the respective number one seeds in their parties – will win the whole thing. Tonight, 15 states, and American Samoa, will hold their primaries.

Despite Nikki Haley’s insistence that she is in the race to win it, she will face an avalanche of closed-primary states such as California and Oklahoma and states with heavy Maga contingents like Texas, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. On the Democratic side, while some states have “uncommitted” on their ballot, don’t expect as high numbers as Michigan saw as a protest against Joe Biden’s support for Israel.

Regardless of how November turns out, the 2024 campaign will almost certainly be the final campaign for Trump, 77, and Biden, 81. Both men have made their marks on their parties: Biden as a Senator for 36 years, a vice president and now president; while Trump harnessed the power of white grievance about immigration to take over the Republican Party and in turn made it more attractive to non-college-educated voters white and non-white alike.

But either way, both men will soon exit the political arena and elected officials in their parties will either stay on the trail they blazed or move in a different direction. These are the three major races to watch on Super Tuesday that could dictate the future of the Republican and Democratic Parties.

The presidential race is not the only contest voters will be weighing in on on Super Tuesday and some of the down-ballot races are likely to prove far more nail-biting.

Here’s your guide to the other key races to look out for:

The senator from Arizona said she was choosing to leave “because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together on stuff”.

Ms Sinema was a Democrat, but switched to be independent in 2022.

Her decision makes the border state’s politics likely to be it one of the most talked-about parts of the country as the presidential election nears, as her presence in the 2024 race was likely to set up a three-way fight between herself and the two major-party challengers for her seat.

President Joe Biden notched his first Super Tuesday win in Iowa.

You’d be forgiven for being surprised to see Iowa results on Super Tuesday. The state is legendary for kicking off the presidential campaign every four years with its famed caucuses. But Democrats changed the process in Iowa after a meltdown in releasing results in 2020.

The trouble prompted the national party to reshuffle the election calendar this year with a goal of emphasizing more diverse states. That left Iowa Democrats sending ballots in the mail, with results released on Tuesday.

Republicans moved forward with the traditional caucuses in January with Trump posting a dominant, nearly 30 percentage point win over his closest rivals.