Super Tuesday live updates: Haley drops, McConnell backs Trump

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.”

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.

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.

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!!!”

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.”

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.

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.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

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.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

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.

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.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

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.

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.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

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.

▶ Read more.

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.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

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

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.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press was able to declare Trump and Biden the winners of their respective presidential primaries in California within 15 minutes of polls closing, based on initial returns that showed them with insurmountable leads.

At the time the races were called, there were Democratic results in eight counties and Republican results in six. Biden and Trump were winning in all counties with results.

Their primary performances were consistent with their past performances in the state: Four years ago, more than 6 million Californians cast their votes for Trump in the general election — a greater number of raw votes than any other state, including Texas and Florida. Still, Biden won the state by almost 30 percentage points.

California conducts its elections largely by mail and allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted, so its vote count often takes weeks, if not a month. The state will continue to report votes as they are processed and tallied.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — Vermont is an overwhelmingly Democratic state that holds open primaries, meaning that registered voters can choose which party’s primary to vote in. Haley has tended to draw support from non-Republican voters who cross over in these primaries: She won Democrats and independent voters in South Carolina and New Hampshire, according to findings from AP VoteCast, a series of surveys of primary voters.

In Vermont, she was doing best in the most Democratic areas, almost doubling Trump’s margins in both areas. Trump was winning the most Republican areas — home to about half the electorate. But his lead there was much smaller than Haley’s lead among the more Democratic-leaning areas, and there were not enough votes uncounted in these areas for him to overtake Haley.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press was able to declare Haley the winner of the Republican presidential primary in Vermont based on vote returns that indicated she had opened a lead that Trump would be unable to overcome.

More than four-fifths of the expected vote had been counted by the time the AP was able to determine that Haley would maintain her lead in the state.

When AP called the race at 10:38 p.m. EST — more than three hours after polls closed — the area with the most votes uncounted was around the city of Burlington, where Haley was notching some of her best results.

Haley was doing better in areas where Biden notched big wins over Trump in 2020. While her biggest lead was in the Burlington area, she was also leading Trump in the central part of the state and the Upper Valley.

While Trump was ahead in the northernmost reaches and around Rutland, his leads there were not large enough to offset the margins Haley was running up in her best regions.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump have all but cemented a November rematch. And it’s increasing the pressure on Nikki Haley — Trump’s last major rival — to exit the Republican race.

Biden and Trump have each won Texas, Alabama, California, Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts. Biden also won the Democratic contests in Utah, Vermont and Iowa.

Haley won Vermont, but the former Republican president carried other states that might have been favorable to her such as Virginia and Maine. Those states have large swaths of moderate voters like those who have backed her in previous primaries.

Not enough states will have voted until later this month for Trump or Biden to formally become their parties’ presumptive nominees.

WASHINGTON — A familiar law is preventing The Associated Press from declaring a winner in the Democratic primary for the state’s U.S. Senate seat: the runoff rule.

Texas requires that contests where no candidate receives a majority of the vote advance to a runoff. While Rep. Colin Allred is currently above that threshold, there are so many uncounted votes remaining in Texas – concentrated particularly in the urban counties of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston – that the AP can’t definitively determine whether Allred will remain clear of the runoff threshold. Slightly more than half of the expected votes in the contest have been reported, so check back later as more votes come in for updates.

WASHINGTON — The criminal charges against former President Donald Trump have done nothing to hurt his appeal with most Republican voters.

Trump is collecting wins that put him closer to the GOP nomination and a likely 2020 rematch against President Joe Biden. But he’s still got looming court cases that range from his mishandling of classified material to his false claims about winning the 2020 election. Jury selection in his New York hush-money trial will begin March 25.

AP VoteCast found that 74% of South Carolina primary voters said the criminal charges are a political attempt to undermine Trump. Still, a third of Republican voters in that state also said he did something illegal in at least one of the cases.

WASHINGTON — The AP was able to determine Biden would pick up his 14th win of the night in Utah after initial returns — including a sizable report from the largest county in the state — indicated he had opened a sizable lead.

Polls closed for Democrats at 10 p.m. EST. Three minutes later, Salt Lake County — which is home to around 60% of the state’s expected Democratic electorate — released the results of more than 30,000 votes.

Biden had more than 40 times as many votes as his next-closest competitor. He had similar leads in the other counties that had released results at the time AP called the race at 10:05 p.m.

While Democrats in Utah held a primary, Republicans will select their presidential nominee via caucuses.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

Trump is expected to win the necessary 1,215 delegates to become the GOP’s presumptive nominee later this month.

WASHINGTON — Trump and Biden picked up another two states apiece, The Associated Press determined, as initial returns from Arkansas and Colorado showed insurmountable leads for the two front-runners.

In Arkansas, both presidential primaries were called within 30 minutes of polls closing. Colorado, which largely conducts its elections by mail, was faster, as the AP was able to determine Trump and Biden would win within 10 minutes of polls closing.

Both their leads in these initial returns were large enough that AP determined there was no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to overtake them.

Biden was leading comfortably in every region of Colorado. In the Boulder area, which is home to an estimated fifth of the state’s Democratic primary voters, Biden had more than 10 times as many votes as the next-closest competitor, the “noncommitted delegate” option. In Arkansas, Biden was winning nearly every vote in Pulaski County, home to Little Rock and an estimated quarter of the state’s Democratic primary voters.

Trump similarly led in every region of both states. In Arkansas, he was winning a narrow majority of votes in Pulaski County — the state’s most Democratic-leaning county — and a more comfortable majority of votes in the other regions. In Colorado, he also had larger leads in the more rural southern and eastern parts of the state. He was also still managing to win in the Denver and Boulder areas and their surrounding suburbs.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — The front-runners continue to log Super Tuesday victories, as Minnesota reported enough votes for The Associated Press to declare Biden and Trump the winners within 30 minutes of polls closing.

In initial returns from 13 counties across the state — which spanned all major regions except the core of the Twin Cities — both candidates were consistently leading. Trump was doing particularly well in southern Minnesota, while Biden had his largest lead in the northern part of the state. He was significantly ahead of Dean Phillips, who has represented Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District since 2019, in every county that reported results.

The AP also looked back at historical vote reports and found that Biden and Trump’s sizable leads were highly unlikely to dissipate. It found that, even if later updates swung the margin by an unprecedently large amount, both candidates would still maintain their leads.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

Keep tabs on which candidates are notching delates with this tracker. So far, Trump has a pretty commanding lead over Haley. But the latest totals still have him needing more than 900 delegates of the 1,215 he needs to get the nomination.

President Joe Biden needs 1,968 delegates to secure the Democratic nod, and he’s got 375 as of now.

Utah’s 40 delegates will be distributed proportionally between the candidates unless one receives over 50% of the vote, which would earn them all of the state’s delegates.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press was able to declare Biden and Trump the winners of Texas’ presidential primaries and Cruz the winner of the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, based on an analysis of initial vote returns from across the entire state.

At 9 p.m. EST, when the final polls closed in the state, over 100 counties had reported almost half a million total votes. The votes came from every major geographic region in the state, with the biggest number coming from the Houston and Dallas areas.

The winning candidates were winning throughout the state. Biden’s best region was in the eastern part of the state and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, while Trump and Cruz were both doing best in the eastern region and Houston areas.

AP compared places where votes have been reported to places where they have not and concluded that even if the trailing candidates exceeded expectations in the vote still to be counted, they couldn’t catch up with the leaders and therefore didn’t have a way to win.

▶ Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the only elected Democrat to challenge President Joe Biden in their party’s primary, isn’t coming close to winning anywhere on Tuesday — but he’s trying not to let it get him down.

“Congratulations to Joe Biden, Uncommitted, Marianne Williamson, and Nikki Haley for demonstrating more appeal to Democratic Party loyalists than me,” Phillips posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Phillips has remained in the race despite providing only token opposition to Biden and no real chance of challenging him nationally. His home state of Minnesota is among those holding a Democratic primary on Super Tuesday — but he isn’t expected to win there, either.

Follow the AP’s 2024 elections tracker.

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press was able to declare Trump and Biden the winners of their respective presidential primaries in Alabama at 8:45 p.m. EST as both continued to steamroll through Super Tuesday contests.

Alabama marked Biden’s 10th and Trump’s seventh victory of the night. Neither has lost a Super Tuesday state yet.

Biden was winning nearly all the votes reported at the time of the call and led in every region of the state. He was especially dominant in the Birmingham area and in the southern part of the state.

At the time of the call, Trump’s next-closest competitor was the “uncommitted” ballot option. He also was doing best in southern Alabama.

CHICAGO — The first major voting date on this year’s primary calendar passed without major issues Tuesday.

There were no specific, credible threats or deliberate nefarious activities as states across the country held Super Tuesday elections, said a senior official for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who insisted on anonymity to discuss the elections.

The official said they are aware of social media outages Tuesday that caused widespread login issues for a few hours across Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger platforms, but they are not aware of any election nexus.

▶ Follow the full results.

WASHINGTON — Efforts to boost Black representation in Alabama were marred on Tuesday when more than 6,000 voters in the new 2nd Congressional District received postcards with incorrect voting information.

The postcards misidentified the voters’ district because of a “software glitch,” according to a county official. The official said anyone was still allowed to cast ballots for the right candidates when they went to their precincts.

Advocates expressed concern that the error could have discouraged turnout in the first election with new district maps.

So the big question hanging over the Senate race is whether a Republican finishes in the top two or if the general election features a faceoff between two Democrats.

The leading candidates are Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star, and Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. It’s possible the Democrats split votes and Garvey ends up leading the primary.

WASHINGTON — The blame game over crime could determine who serves as Los Angeles County district attorney.

Democrat George Gascón, a progressive prosecutor elected after the murder of George Floyd, is fighting to hold onto his job after surviving two previous recall attempts.

He faces 11 challengers in today’s nonpartisan primary. The two candidates with the most votes will face off in the general election in November.

Gascón’s critics have highlighted a series of robberies at luxury stores to suggest that lawlessness has been sweeping through Los Angeles. Property crime rose from 2022 to 2023. Violent crime slipped, but it’s still above prepandemic levels.

• Biden and Trump are the clear favorites to clinch their party’s nominations. However, neither will be declared the presumptive nominee tonight. Trump won’t have enough delegates until March 12, and Biden will have to wait until March 19.
• The primary calendars don’t line up, which can be confusing. For example, Iowa Democrats voted today even though Iowa Republicans held their caucus in January.
• Sometimes The Associated Press will be able to project a winner very quickly after voting is over. Read more about that process here.

Here’s when polls are closing:

• The first results came from Iowa at 5:50 p.m. EST. Next up are Vermont and Virginia at 7 p.m. EST, also when Republicans will begin caucusing in Alaska. Voting ends in North Carolina at 7:30 p.m. EST.
• A cascade of states — Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee — finish voting at 8 p.m. EST. Most polls will also close in Texas around that time, but some will finish later because the state spans two time zones.
• Arkansas polls close at 8:30 p.m. EST, then Colorado and Minnesota at 9 p.m. EST.
• Utah is holding caucuses for Republicans and a primary for Democrats. The caucuses begin at 9 p.m. EST and polls close at 10 p.m. EST.
• California polls close at 11 p.m. EST, and voting ends in Alaska at 12 a.m. EST.

“Being in space didn’t stop (O’Hara) and I from voting. Go vote today!” Moghbeli wrote.

According to NASA’s website, after an astronaut fills out an electronic absentee ballot aboard the space station, the encrypted document goes through a tracking and data relay satellite to a ground antenna at the White Sands Complex in New Mexico. From there, the ballot is sent to the Mission Control Center in Houston and forwarded to the county clerk’s office.

BOSTON — Marwa Osman, a 35-year-old content creator, says she voted “no preference” over Biden’s policy regarding the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. She is opposed to sending any aid to Israel and wants the president to support a full ceasefire. “We supported Biden from the beginning and kind of feel betrayed by him.”

If the administration doesn’t change its policy toward the war, Osman says she is considering sitting out the November election.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’ll probably not vote or vote for an independent party. I just cannot have my vote in good conscience go to something that is aiding to kill innocent civilians.”

Andy Stone, Meta’s head communications, acknowledged the issues on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said the company “resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Users reported being locked out of their Facebook accounts and feeds on the platform as well as Threads and Instagram were not refreshing. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, appeared unaffected.

A senior official with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told reporters Tuesday that the agency was “not aware of any specific election nexus nor any specific malicious cyberactivity nexus to the outage.”

▶ Read more about Tuesday’s outage here.

Whether they live in Tennessee or elsewhere, Swift tells people to check their polling places and times at vote.org.

Swift endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 and backed Democratic candidates in Tennessee in 2018 after breaking her longstanding refusal to discuss her political views.

Criminal trials are looming over Trump’s 2024 campaign, but according to AP VoteCast surveys in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Republican primary voters mostly don’t believe he did something illegal.

Between 26% and 38% of voters in the early contests think that Trump has done something illegal in at least one of the three major cases against him: The case involving the classified documents found at his Florida home, the Washington, D.C. case involving his role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, or the Georgia case involving Trump’s alleged attempt to interfere in the vote count in the 2020 presidential election.

The remaining voters think he either did something unethical but not illegal, or that he did nothing wrong.

A new AP-NORC poll shows that few Americans see improvements in their own lives or the country as a whole over the past three years. More than half of U.S. adults say the national economy (57%) is somewhat or much worse off than before Biden took office in 2021, and a similar share (55%) say the country is somewhat or much worse off.

Americans are slightly less pessimistic about their own situations, but 41% say that they and their families are somewhat or much worse off than before Biden became president.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here.

AP VoteCast surveys of early primary and caucus voters found that about one-third of voters in the Republican contests in South Carolina and Iowa correctly said that Joe Biden was legitimately elected during the 2020 presidential election. About 6 in 10 said, incorrectly, that he was not legitimately elected.

In New Hampshire, where the electorate is less conservative, about half of voters who participated in the GOP primary agreed with the untrue statement that Biden was not legitimately elected.

▶ Read more about what to expect in the California primary races.

According to AP VoteCast surveys of voters in the early Republican contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, 6 in 10voters in both the South Carolina Republican primary and GOP Iowa caucuses consider themselves supporters of MAGA. Half of those in New Hampshire also identified with the movement.

There is significant — but not total — overlap between Trump voters and MAGA supporters: In South Carolina, 82% of voters who said they cast a ballot for Trump also identify with the MAGA movement, compared to 21% of those who said they voted for Haley.

Biden is the incumbent and faces only token opposition in the Democratic race. On the Republican side, Donald Trump has won nearly every primary so far, and is expected to win big on Tuesday, too.

Of course, there’s always the possibility for an upset. Nikki Haley is still in the race to be the Republican presidential nominee, but she’s facing tough contests in states where she’s struggled to win support. Biden is far and away leading over Democratic challengers.

But even though we think we know what will happen, neither Trump nor Biden will be able to claim the “presumptive nominee” title yet. The earliest that could happen is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden.

For example, in 2020, Joe Biden was basically counted out of the race after dismal showings in early primaries. But it was this swift and stunning comeback on Super Tuesday that really gave everyone a jolt. He ran the board, winning 10 of the 14 states. Other candidates dropped out out of the race after his wins. And you know what happened after that.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump has won all but one Republican primary so far, and is expected to win big on Tuesday, too.

▶ Read more about the race.

According to the AP VoteCast survey of GOP primary voters in South Carolina, Haley did well among people who have higher levels of education and moderates — neither of which is a very large or powerful group within the GOP electorate.

In the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina Republican primaries and caucuses, AP VoteCast surveys found that immigration emerged as the top issue for voters, beating out the economy and foreign policy concerns.

Trump’s hardline policies and rhetoric on immigration are popular among early contest voters. Between 79% and 88% of voters in the Republican contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina say they support building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Around 7 in 10 early state voters also said that immigrants in the U.S. today are doing more to hurt than help the country.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Sunday she no longer feels bound by a pledge that required all GOP contenders to support the party’s eventual nominee in order to participate in the primary debates.

The Republican National Committee had made the pledge a prerequisite for all candidates, and nearly every major contender signed, except for Donald Trump, the current front-runner, who skipped the debates.

When Haley, Trump’s lone remaining major challenger for the nomination, was asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether she was compelled to honor that commitment, she said, “No. I think I’ll make what decision I want to make.”

▶ Read more about Haley’s comments on the RNC pledge.

About 4 in 10 Democrats (44%) say the U.S. is spending “too little” on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia, up from 17% in November, according to a new AP-NORC poll. The share of Democrats who say the U.S. is spending “too much” (17% now, from 32% in November) or “about the right amount” (38% now, from48% in November) has dropped over the same period.

Republicans and Independents still tend to want to send less aid: 55% of Republicans and 45% of Independents think the U.S. is spending “too much” on assistance to Ukraine.

On Super Tuesday, the federal government’s cybersecurity agency is going to provide some back up to state and local election officials who are facing a long list of security challenges including the threat of cyberattacks waged by hostile foreign governments.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — known as CISA — is standing up an election operations center to bring together federal, state and local election officials and the private sector. The idea is to share real-time threat information.

After the 2016 election, the nation’s voting systems were designated as critical infrastructure on par with the nation’s banks, nuclear power plants and dams. That means state election officials can now receive security clearances and federal resources such as cybersecurity and security reviews.

Candidates who are about to win their party nominations generally massage their messaging and try to emphasize points that appeal to a broader audience. Not Donald Trump.

The former president has doubled down on the incendiary rhetoric that fires up his base but alienates wide swaths of voters. On Saturday, he suggested President Joe Biden was trying to “overthrow” the United States with his border policies.

He’s compared himself in recent weeks to Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison, and suggested Black people like him better because he faces prosecution in four separate cases.

His aides say they’re modifying their strategy and tactics for the general election and a likely Biden rematch but won’t try to change what Trump says.“Donald Trump is Donald Trump. That’s not going to change,” senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said. “Our job is not to remake Donald Trump.”

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In the wake of the Supreme Court decision Monday that allows Trump to remain on the ballot, she added to her well-rehearsed campaign speech, “I’ll defeat Donald Trump fair and square. But I want him on the ballot.”

Haley’s more wholesale blaming of Trump for recent Republican losses shows how far she’s ventured in the past two months. Her sharpest criticism of the former president used to be that “chaos follows him everywhere.”

But from a small-business warehouse in Spring, Texas, she rattled off Republican setbacks in swing states, the Republican National Committee and Congress that have taken place since Trump seized the party’s national mantle.

It’s a long, long way from the former Trump appointee who said she wouldn’t run against him.

Former President Donald Trump gained a clear win at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, which unanimously ruled that states don’t have the ability to bar him — or any other federal candidates — from the ballot under a rarely-used constitutional provision that prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The decision shuts down a push in dozens of states to end Trump’s candidacy through a clause in the 14th Amendment, written to prevent former Confederates from serving in government after the Civil War.

But it may open the door to further electoral uncertainty, exposing more state officials to disqualification under the provision and setting up a constitutional showdown should Trump win the election.

Facing four separate criminal trials, Trump’s legal peril may just be beginning. So is the Supreme Court’s role in that process.

▶ Read the AP’s takeaways on today’s Supreme Court decision.

It’s traditionally the biggest day nationwide for primary elections and caucuses before the actual Election Day in November.

Until now, only one or two states hold primaries on the same day. But this Tuesday, voters in 16 different states and one territory (Get it? “super” Tuesday) will be choosing who they want to run for president. Some states are also choosing who should run for governor or senator for their state, and some district attorneys, too.