Super Tuesday 2024 highlights and results | Biden and Trump nearly sweep their races

President Joe Biden will announce during the speech tonight that he will direct the U.S. military to help set up a temporary port off the Gaza coast. It will open a sea route for food and other aid for desperate Palestinian civilians trapped in the Israel-Hamas war. That’s according to senior administration officials who spoke to The Associated Press.

Democrats, including some of his closest allies, have become increasingly vocal about the need for the U.S. to act directly to ease civilian suffering in Gaza. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Associated Press that he will be looking for the president to give a forceful message on the need to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“Obviously [Biden] is going to talk about domestic issues. He’s going to talk about Ukraine. He’s going to talk about the awful attacks of October 7, as he should and Israel’s right to self defense,” the Maryland lawmaker said. “But I also think he should couple all of that with a clear message that the United States will not stand by and tolerate people starving to death.”

Mitch McConnell has criticized Trump as “morally responsible” for the 2021 mob siege of the Capitol.

So even though he said Wednesday that “it should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support,” the endorsement was still a remarkable turnaround from the onetime critic.

While McConnell said early in the election cycle he would support the eventual Republican presidential nominee, his endorsement of Trump is a striking reunion for the two men, who have put political interests ahead of any personal displeasure with one another.

And McConnell’s stamp lends an imprimatur of institutional legitimacy to the indicted former president’s bid to return to the White House.

But it also comes as the Kentucky senator is stepping down from his own leadership role after his term ends, a position he has held longer than any other senator.

California, a Democratic stronghold and the nation’s most populous state, won’t have a woman in the Senate for the first time in more than three decades.

Republican former baseball star Steve Garvey and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff will face off in November for the seat long held by the late Dianne Feinstein. She died last year.

The campaign marks a new era in California politics, which was long dominated by Feinstein and a handful of other veteran politicians.

With the exit of Nikki Haley from the Republican 2024 race, America will have to wait longer to see a woman elected to the presidency.

She’s the latest in a long line of women with presidential hopes to crash against the monolith of a man — in this case, Republican Donald Trump.

This all comes 104 years after women gained the right to vote. And right now, women hold a record percentage of seats in Congress, occupy the vice presidency and sit in four of the nine seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Women CEOs run a record 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies, according to Forbes. Women are heads of state or government in 26 countries, according to the United Nations. Mexico is poised to elect its first female president.

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Trump’s campaign is falsely claiming in a fundraising email that Nikki Haley endorsed his candidacy.

Haley left the 2024 GOP contest on Wednesday. But she didn’t endorse the former president in her speech in Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, she challenged him to win the support of the moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.

Trump officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the message.

In a social media post, Trump continued to mock his former rival, while at the same time extending an invitation to “all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation. BIDEN IS THE ENEMY, HE IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY,” he wrote. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Will Haley’s supporters unify behind Trump?

Nikki Haley’s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to her supporters - those voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Trump and his fiery brand of “Make America Great Again” politics.

She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that will likely play a pivotal role in the general election.

What isn’t clear yet is whether those supporters will default to Democratic President Joe Biden.

Trump, in a social media post on Wednesday, extended an invitation to “all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.” That comes after he had declared Haley donors would be permanently banned from his movement.

An Israeli flag hung near voting machines in Alexandria, Virginia on Super Tuesday led to complaints from some Muslim residents. They were concerned about possible voter intimidation and whether rules for political materials at polling places were violated.

The flag hung behind a voting machine at the Beth El Hebrew Congregation precinct. Angela Maniglia Turner, director of the city’s elections and general registrar apologized to anyone who was made to feel uncomfortable or concerned.

“The layout of the polling place was not meant in any way to send a political or religious message,” Turner said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The city was made aware after a complaint by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. The group called on election officials to investigate the report and said: “such a display could be viewed as an act of intimidation targeting Muslim and Arab-American voters” amid the Israel-Hamas War.

“Any house of worship hosting a polling station should avoid placing political symbols in the view of voters,” CAIR said in a statement. “The only flag that should appear above a voting machine is the American flag.”

Nikki Haley leaves the 2024 presidential contest having made history as the first woman to win a Republican primary contest. She beat Trump in the District of Columbia on Sunday and in Vermont on Tuesday.

She had insisted she would stay in the race through Super Tuesday and crossed the country campaigning in states holding Republican contests. Ultimately, she was unable to knock Trump off his glide path to a third straight nomination. She announced Wednesday she was dropping out.

Haley’s allies note that she exceeded most of the political world’s expectations by making it as far as she did.

President Joe Biden is making an explicit appeal to Nikki Haley supporters to back him November. He is arguing that Donald Trump “doesn’t want” them.

Biden was reacting to the news that Haley, a former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor was leaving the Republican primary race by saying. He said: “Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters.”

Biden does, though. “I want to be clear,” he said in a statement. “There is a place for them in my campaign.”

The president added that he knew “there is a lot we won’t agree on” but that there would be common ground on core issues like preserving U.S. democracy and the rule of law and defending NATO.

When Nikki Haley said she would withdraw from the 2024 presidential race following her underwhelming showing on Super Tuesday, she did so using a phrase that would seem at odds with the finality of her announcement.

The former South Carolina Governor and U.N. ambassador said she would“suspend” her campaign. Not end, not conclude, not terminate – suspend.

Haley is hardly the first candidate to reach for the term. There are a number of reasons candidates do so. And one of the big ones has a lot to do with money.

Under federal election law, a candidate who has filed to run for office technically remains one until the after the election. But by declaring that they will “suspend” a campaign, a candidate is signaling to donors – both to their loyal supporters, as well as those who are backing their rivals -- that they are shifting to the next phase. After a spirited campaign, that often includes the need to retire outstanding debts.

But the use of the term “suspend” also adheres to one of the longstanding axioms of politics: never close a door, never rule anything out.

This year, especially, there may be good reason for invoking the phrase as Donald Trump, the sole remaining Republican contender, navigates 91 criminal charges against him.

Should Trump receive a conviction, Haley could just as easily “unsuspend” her campaign.

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Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed Donald Trump for president.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the influential Kentucky senator who has blamed Trump for “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

McConnell is the last top GOP leader in Congress to fall in line with Trump. McConnell declared his support in a statement issued after Trump’s Super Tuesday victories pushed the former president closer to the party’s 2024 nomination.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said.

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Nikki Haley didn’t endorse Donald Trump as she dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday. Instead, she encouraged him to earn the support of moderate Republicans.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor, was Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election.

Nikki Haley is expected to suspend her campaign for presidency in an announcement on Wednesday morning, according to three people with direct knowledge. When she does, she is not planning to endorse Donald Trump, said the people who spoke on condition of anonymity. Instead, she is expected to encourage Trump to earn the support of the coalition of moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.

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On his fourth try, Joe Biden finally won Iowa.

For decades, Biden had been rejected by its voters, from his first abortive run in the 1988 cycle to 2020, when he finished a distant fourth. In 2008, he won less than 1% of the caucus vote.

This time, Iowa wasn’t first and it was a primary, not a caucus, and Biden won easily.

His victory Tuesday came only after he was already an incumbent president — and after the state had been stripped of its prized leadoff role and voted along with the masses.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson easily won the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary. His incendiary rhetoric — he’s called Hillary Clinton a “heifer” and Michelle Obama a man — ensures a hotly contested general election in the crucial swing state that could spill over into the presidential race.

Robinson had no prior experience in public office before his 2020 election — and it shows.

He blasted the action hero movie “Black Panther” in 2018 as a “satanic Marxist production” made by a “secular Jew,” using a Yiddish slur for black people. He faced calls to resign in 2021 after likening gay and transgender people to “filth.”

His brash style earned plaudits from Trump, who on Sunday called Robinson “better than Martin Luther King” while offering his “complete and total endorsement.”

But it is also likely to motivate Democrats in the state to turn out in November to support state Attorney General Josh Stein — while raising oodles of advertising dollars to use Robinson’s own words against him.

Super Tuesday is so vast that there were primaries for more than one-quarter of all seats in the House of Representatives — 115 of 438. But only eight of those seats are likely to be competitive in November.

That astonishing statistic comes from Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Institute for Justice in New York. That means that most House candidates who won primaries Tuesday are guaranteed seats in Congress, just for securing the votes of the most motivated members of their parties.

Democrats in Hawaii were scheduled to vote Wednesday on their party’s nominee for the president.

There has been little visible campaigning in the islands for the presidential race but incumbent President Joe Biden has a large advantage in the party’s caucus. Others on the ballot include U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips and self-help author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson.

Adrian Tam, the interim chairperson of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, noted Biden’s success in states like Michigan where party contests have already been held.

“The American people really do have confidence in President Biden’s leadership. So, as expected, he does have the upper hand when it comes to our upcoming caucus,” Tam said. Even so, he urged party members to participate.

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Vermont was once a stronghold of old-guard Republicanism, exclusively electing GOP candidates to statewide office for more than a century. But the state that handed Haley her only win on Super Tuesday long ago ceded that reputation.

Now Vermont, which last swung for a Republican in a presidential contest in 1988, is perhaps better known for progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, the jam band Phish and a crunchy strain of back-to-earth lifestyle.

So, while Vermont handed Haley her first statewide victory, the state itself is decidedly not in step with Trump and the modern Republican Party.

Among those attending Trump’s Super Tuesday remarks at Mar-a-Lago were staff and supporters, including the rapper Forgiato Blow and former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

The crowd erupted as Fox News, playing on screens around the ballroom, announced that the former president had won North Carolina’s GOP primary.

He went on to attack Biden over the U.S.-Mexico border and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, usual features of his speeches.

If Adam Schiff wins a U.S. Senate seat in California in November, he’ll probably have two Republicans to thank.

The first is Donald Trump, whose attacks on Schiff helped turn him into a Democratic hero. (Trump holds a grudge because Schiff helped lead his first impeachment.)

The second is Steve Garvey, the former baseball star who decided to run for Senate this year. Garvey won enough votes to prevent another Democrat — either Katie Porter or Barbara Lee — from advancing to the general election in November.

Given Democrats’ advantage in California, the primary outcome clears a path for Schiff to ascend from the House to the Senate.

NEW YORK (AP) — Nikki Haley will suspend her presidential campaign Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, according to people familiar with her decision, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Three people with direct knowledge who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly confirmed Haley’s decision ahead of an announcement scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, was Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election.

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Haley won her first state of the primary season — Vermont — but that was no cause to talk about momentum.

She continued her long streak of losing big to Trump in Republican primaries in every region of the country. Her lone other victory had come in last week’s Washington, D.C. primary.

Tuesday’s defeats continued to erode the rationale for her insurgent challenge. She fell short even in states like Virginia, where the electorate, rich in college-educated suburban voters, played to her strength.

Here’s a simple way to sum up the Super Tuesday results: anti-climactic.

The series of presidential nomination contests largely played out as expected. President Joe Biden crushed his Democratic opponents, except in America Samoa. Former President Donald Trump got closer to winning what would be his third Republican nomination, even if he lost Vermont.

Biden’s campaign said Democratic voters were united behind the president in their support for his reelection campaign.

But that doesn’t mean this election is without drama. Biden has elevated this potential rehash of 2020 as a debate about U.S. democracy surviving. Trump has pledged something of a restoration if gets back into the White House, with trouble for those who opposed him.

The Associated Press was able to call almost every Republican Super Tuesday contest for former President Donald Trump after initial results revealed no path for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to overtake him.

In the night’s final call, the AP declared Trump the winner of Utah’s presidential caucuses at 3:39 a.m. EST with 65% of the votes counted and Trump holding 58% of them.

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WASHINGTON — In the penultimate presidential contest of Super Tuesday, the AP was able to declare Trump the winner of the Republican presidential caucuses at 2:17 a.m. EST based on initial vote returns.

With almost 40% of the expected vote reported, Trump had a resounding lead over Haley. She wasn’t winning more than one-quarter of the vote in any district, and in the 12 districts that reported at least 99% of their expected vote in that first release, she was doing no better than one-fifth of the vote.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

It’s getting pretty late in Washington, but as results from Super Tuesday continue to trickle in, the delegate allocations continue to trickle down.

At 1:55 a.m. ET, with only the presidential caucuses in Utah and Alaska left to report, here’s where the delegate count stands.

Trump has won at least 675 delegates from Super Tuesday states so far, bringing his total delegates to almost 800. At a minimum, he’ll receive 74% of the Republican delegates available on Super Tuesday.

The state in which he received the most delegates was California, where he received all 169 of the state’s delegates after finishing with a majority of the statewide vote.

Biden has won at least 607 delegates so far and has surpassed 800 total delegates. He swept the delegates in Vermont and Iowa. In one of the bigger surprises of the night, Biden wound up splitting the six delegates from American Samoa with unknown challenger Jason Palmer.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who was a leading voice during then-President Donald Trump’s two impeachments, thanked supporters as he celebrates winning a spot on the general election ballot in the race for a U.S. Senate seat once held by the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“You had my back every step of the way,” Schiff said to the crowd. “I cannot thank you enough.”

His remarks were interrupted throughout by chants calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

WASHINGTON — There weren’t a lot of surprises in the presidential contests by the end of Super Tuesday. Biden and Trump won almost everything.

Nikki Haley beat Trump in Vermont in an upset. And Biden lost American Samoa, a small U.S. territory.

Left to call at 1:45 a.m. EST on Wednesday were GOP-run events in Alaska and Utah. The AP was waiting for the parties to release the results.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star, did not shy away from baseball puns in a victory speech as he celebrates winning a spot on the general election ballot to vie for a U.S. Senate seat that was long held by the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“Welcome to the California comeback,” he said to a crowd in Southern California. “What you all are feeling tonight is what it feels to hit a knockoff home run.”

A Republican has not won a Senate race in deep-blue California since 1988. Garvey will face off against House Democrat Adam Schiff in November.

ROCKWALL, Texas — Katrina Pierson, a former Trump presidential campaign adviser, has advanced to a Republican primary runoff in Texas for a legislative seat in the Dallas suburbs.

Pierson’s opponent is Rep. Justin Holland, who was one of dozens of Republicans who voted last year to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally. The runoff is May 28.

It’s not the first time Pierson has run for office in Texas. She lost a run for Congress in 2014 before becoming a spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON — Democrat U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican former baseball player Steve Garvey are headed for a November election to decide who will fill the U.S. Senate seat held for three decades by the late Dianne Feinstein. But it’s not just one term.

They’re competing to serve out the remainder of Feinstein’s term between the November election and the January inauguration of a new senator. And they’re also running for her full six-year term.

The strange scenario came about because Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed someone to the seat after Feinstein’s death. Election rules require a special election to fill the last bit of that term.

WASHINGTON — Jason Palmer knows he’s a longshot for the Democratic presidential nomination. “When I started this race, I knew there was a 99% chance that Joe Biden would win,” he told The Associated Press.

But the 52-year-old Baltimore investor still managed to win four delegates in American Samoa on Super Tuesday, denying the president a victory there.

Palmer was attending an education conference in Washington when the results came in.“I found out that I had won because my phone started blowing up with friends and campaign staffers texting me,” he said.

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WASHINGTON — Allred will avoid a runoff and finish with at least 50% of the vote in the Democratic primary for Texas’ U.S. Senate seat, The Associated Press determined at 11:32 p.m. EST.

At the time of the race call, more than two-thirds of the expected vote had been reported. Allred was well above the margin he needed to avoid a runoff. The majority of votes left to be counted were in urban areas, particularly Austin and Houston — the places Allred was doing best. Most notably, Allred was winning around four-fifths of the votes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which had reported a majority of its votes.

Allred’s next-closest competitor, Roland Gutierrez, was doing best in the border counties in southern Texas. However, this region constitutes only one-quarter of the expected vote, and Gutierrez was not running up big enough margins to offset Allred’s advantage in the more populous counties.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. — Nikki Haley’s national campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement tonight that the Republican candidate was honored to be the first GOP woman to win two presidential primary contests.

Perez-Cubas said, “Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump. That is not the unity our party needs for success.”

Despite her win Tuesday and her primary win in Washington, D.C., Trump was notching more victories.

WASHINGTON — Voting is slated to end in Alaska for Republicans at 12:00 a.m. EST.

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press was able to declare Schiff one of two winners of California’s open Senate primary at 11:30 p.m. ET because initial results from 30 counties showed Schiff with a lead big enough to ensure a top-two finish.

Schiff will also finish in the top two in the special Senate primary, which is being held to fill the final weeks of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term.

In California, all candidates run on the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party. The AP will call the final winner when enough votes have been counted to determine who will finish second.

At the time the race was called, Schiff had more than twice as many votes as his next-closest competitor, with around one-fifth of the expected vote reported. Schiff was leading in the Bay Area and coastal counties and was narrowly trailing in the inland suburbs of Los Angeles and San Diego. Los Angeles County, the state’s largest county and home to around 20% of the electorate, did not report votes within the first 30 minutes after polls close. But based on analyses of the state’s voting history and the political leanings of different areas of California, the AP determined there was no scenario that would see Schiff fall to third place or lower.

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FILE - Alabama Rep. Anthony Daniels speaks with the media during the opening of the legislative session at the Alabama State House in Montgomery, Ala., Jan. 11, 2022. Daniels is seeking the Democratic nomination in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District. (Mickey Welsh/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP, File)

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In this image provided by the Figures for Congress campaign, Shomari Figures, former deputy chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, poses for a photo. Figures is running for the Democratic nomination in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District. (Terri Baskin/Figures for Congress via AP)

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WASHINGTON —Two Democrats have advanced to a primary runoff election in Alabama’s newly-drawn 2nd congressional district. Anthony Daniels and Shomari Figures emerged from the crowded field. The district is closely watched by Democrats as a potential pickup opportunity in the U.S. House.

Because no candidate garnered more than 50% of the vote, the race now advances a runoff between Daniels and Figures. The runoff is set for April 16.

The new district was created after a federal court ordered Alabama redraw its congressional map to better represent Black voters, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court. The redrawn district includes parts of Montgomery and Mobile, as well as much of the region’s “Black Belt” where a majority of the state’s Black population resides.