Today is Super Tuesday, a day that occurs in the US every four years in which citizens are chosen via lottery to wear a spandex suit of their own design and everyone else has to play along with the fantasy that they are superheroes for 24 hours. Just kidding, it’s a day when a lot of states in the US vote in primary elections, and a lot of confusing rules come into play. People are, essentially, voting for who they’d like to be able to vote for in the real presidential election in November; the process by which this occurs is complicated and technically involves selecting delegates to the individual party’s national convention, where they will weigh in on the candidate to be nominated by that party. Making things more confusing is the fact that the delegate system doesn’t even work the same way across party lines; for the Democratic party, delegates are selected proportionally according to vote percentages, whereas the Republican party uses a combination of different methods of determining number of delegates, including winner-takes-all, winner-takes-some, and proportional voting. You can learn more specifics about what the primaries mean in terms of Democrats and Republicans thanks to those two linked explainers from the Constitution Center.
What does Super Tuesday mean in practical terms? Well, whereas the major primaries thus far, like New Hampshire and South Carolina, have been tests of how well a candidate is supported in individual states (often with very specific demographics, like New Hampshire, which is overwhelmingly white), Super Tuesday offers a better sense of how a candidate is perceived nationally, since so many states are voting at once. For a few candidates on the GOP side who have been flailing along in inspiring defiance of their total lack of support, this might be the last straw. For the rest of us, it will be one more piece in the puzzle of what has so far been a truly bizarre and disorienting election season. States voting today include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia — if you live in one of these states, please, please vote! Republicans in Alaska and Democrats in American Samoa can also caucus today.
This post will be updated throughout the day by Senior Editor Heather and Managing Editor Rachel with new links, poll results, commentary, and probably some emojis.
10:00 am
The polls are open! Unsurprisingly, the best state-by-state analysis of both the GOP and Democratic races come from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. (Click here for the Republican breakdown. Click here for the Democratic one.)
Clinton favored: AL, AR, GA, MA, TN, TX, VA
Sanders favored: VT
Too close to call: OK
No forecast for caucus states.https://t.co/zGQiBy7mtB— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 1, 2016
Democrats — After her sweeping victory in South Carolina, Hillary is now forecasted to win all of the deep south states that will vote today. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas. Bernie will most assuredly dominate his home state of Vermont. The polls are forecasting a tight race between them in Oklahoma and Massachusetts. Colorado and Minnesota are holding caucuses today, and since there’s no entrance poll data for those things, there’s no solid prediction for either state. Demographically, they’re similar to Iowa, where votes for Clinton and Sanders were nearly evenly split.
Trump favored: AL, AR, GA, MA, OK, TN, VA
Cruz favored: TX
No official forecast for other states.https://t.co/bBP2k68Tzs— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 1, 2016
Republicans — Trump was leading every Super Tuesday primary poll this morning, except for Texas, which was leaning Ted Cruz’s way. The closest GOP primaries today are predicted to be Arkansas (where Cruz and Rubio are still holding on), Georgia (where Cruz, Rubio, and Trump were practically tied just a month ago), and Oklahoma (where Rubio has spent a significant amount of money to hang on to a 20 percent chance of victory). And then there are the caucuses. Alaska is a wild card, no one really knows what’s going on there. Trump, Cruz, and Rubio are likely to split Minnesota’s delegates evenly, pulling down about 13 each.
One of my favorite parts of presidential elections is when candidates queue up and vote for themselves. Democracy!
An optimistic Bernie Sanders votes for Bernie Sanders https://t.co/FKrjZJS8ei by @yamiche pic.twitter.com/eJiA8qTE2b
— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) March 1, 2016
3:00Â pm
Here’s a neat graphic from the NYT that sheds a bit of light on how the delegate breakdown works!
The delegates at stake on Super Tuesday https://t.co/lig6wRaQQk pic.twitter.com/rDxkITSkUl
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 1, 2016
And a few news stories that aren’t directly related to Super Tuesday, but provide context on the candidates:
+ Trump is reported to have ordered Secret Service agents to remove 30 Black students from an event he was holding on their own campus; the students are not reported to have been disrupting the event and say they had no plans to. (This news is especially shocking because Secret Service agents aren’t supposed to serve as a personal police force; they’re only supposed to protect the life of the person they’re guarding from attacks.)
+ A poll finds that Rubio’s supporters are more “racially resentful” than Trump’s.
+ NY Mag writers imagine what a Trump presidency might look like.
An emotional voter hugs Hillary Clinton during a surprise visit to Mapps Coffee in Minneapolis-St. @HillaryClinton pic.twitter.com/upaabyJDAL
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) March 1, 2016
5:00 pm
FiveThirtyEight has an explainer on how many Republican delegates are actually at stake today, which is great because it’s confusing!
An NYT piece on the stance the GOP old guard is taking on Trump currently. An excerpt of the first paragraph:
Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Tuesday forcefully denounced Donald J. Trump’s refusal to distance himself from the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. But Mr. Ryan did not shift from his position that he would support Mr. Trump if he became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, a perplexing contradiction that reflects the growing anxiety on Capitol Hill over the billionaire businessman’s ascent.
Predictwise shows Trump with an 86% chance of winning the nomination and a 26% chance of winning the election: https://t.co/RUxXOiRqcf
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 1, 2016
Maybe most alarming is that I’m feeling comforted by the above 26% statistic currently, because it’s lower than it could be!
7:00 pm
Polls in Georgia, Vermont and Virginia are now officially closed and the speculation has given way to actual predictions. According to MSNBC:
Georgia: Hillary Clinton will win. Donald Trump will win.
Vermont: Bernie Sanders will win. Too early to call between Trump and John Kaisch.
Virginia: Hillary Clinton will win. Too early to call between Trump and Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, NYT reports that Republican business leaders are going to raise money to do whatever they need to do to stop Trump. (A thing Rachel Maddow has been smirking about all afternoon. “They’ll forever be the party that had to buy back the election and tell their voters, ‘Sorry, we don’t trust you and we’re not going to do what you’ve told us what to do.’”)
85% of Trump voters support a ban on Muslims #SuperTuesday #Decision2016 pic.twitter.com/4nSBqNFuX3
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 1, 2016
#Decision2016 #SuperTuesday pic.twitter.com/ke5GKvOwx2
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 1, 2016
Aaaaand Donald Trump is the official victor in Georgia primaries. And, yup, Hillary has won in Virginia. So far predictions seem to be panning out, although the gap between Trump and the next Republican candidate so far seems much smaller than people were expecting in several states. We’ll have to wait for real results to see. Hillary has also won in Georgia, with majority support from Black voters.
https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/704821823083560964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Bernie Sanders has won Vermont, the state of which he is Senator. Hillary Clinton has won the American Samoa Democratic caucus.
8:00 pm
Polls have now closed in Alabama, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Predictions according to MSNBC (Are you watching MSNBC? The lieutenant governor of Texas was on just now with Chris Matthews in a pub and everyone was heckling him and he was chastising them because his mom had been waiting all day to see him on TV!):
Alabama: Trump is the projected winner. Clinton is the projected winner.
Tennessee: Trump is the projected winner. Clinton is the projected winner.
Massachusetts: Trump is the projected winner. Too close to call between Clinton and Sanders.
Oklahoma: Too close to call in both races.
Also, NBC has now called Vermont for Trump.
Interestingly, Sanders is edging Clinton in Massachusetts. FiveThirtyEight had her at a 90+ percent chance of winning earlier today.
(Also, if you are watching MSNBC, do you think Rachel Maddow is drunk? She is so giggly!)
A timely take from the Washington Post on how Trump took MA. As someone from MA originally (this is Rachel typing) I don’t find it surprising at all — MA has a lot of wealthy white people, and where you have those you’ll almost always have some staunch Republicans who want to vote for other wealthy white people — but I can see how others would find it so.
And FiveThirtyEight on what the heck the deal is in Oklahoma, a historically red state with a white-hot small but determined core of Sanders supporters. (Right now Clinton and Sanders are roughly tied there but Sanders seems optimistic.) If anyone is Oklahoman and wants to weigh in on the general climate we’d love to hear it.
A current estimate of each Republican’s delegate count based on results and exit polls thus far:
Live estimates of tonight’s final Republican delegate count https://t.co/1FEgU8eyrP pic.twitter.com/nVUbK2P9eU
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 2, 2016
Hillary has officially won Arkansas. Massachusetts right now is VERY close between Bernie and Hillary! Interesting! Virginia is looking more and more like Trump territory as more votes come in. Some networks seem to be calling the win for him, although I don’t have it from NYT yet.
Two networks are now calling Virginia for Donald Trump, which would make that his fifth win of the night. #SuperTuesday
— Intelligencer (@intelligencer) March 2, 2016
Ok, Trump officially has Virginia, I believe, and previous projections were correct: Clinton and Trump have Tennessee. Also, my cat has started making a weird noise like she swallowed a frog, if anyone is interested.
9:00 pm
While Hillary Clinton speaks to a crowd in Miami, predictions come through for the polls that closed at 9:00 pm.
Texas: Clinton is projected to win. Ted Cruz is projected to win.
Also, the AP is projecting that Cruz will win Oklahoma.
Rough, rough, rough night for Marco Rubio. He’s telling a crowd right now that “five days ago, we started telling people that Donald Trump is a con artist!” Um. Maybe something you should have started saying five months ago, buddy.
(Hey, have you ever read this story where a neurologist explains why it’s so unsettling to look at Ted Cruz’s face?)
Bernie has won in Oklahoma! Fascinating.
Bernie Sanders projected to win Oklahoma Democratic primary – AP, NBC News https://t.co/O6p1MuPhQ3
— Breaking Politics (@breakingpol) March 2, 2016
Clinton is currently ahead in MA, but only by four points! So close! I am getting dangerously low wrt my glass of wine and may need to re-up. While I do that, here are the current standings, just to keep everything straight:
Clinton:Â Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, American Samoa (caucus)
Sanders:Â Oklahoma, Vermont
Trump:Â Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia
Cruz:Â Texas, Oklahoma
As-of-yet-uncertain states, either because their polls aren’t closed or votes haven’t been fully counted: Colorado (Democrats), Minnesota, Alaska (Republicans), Massachusetts (Democrats), Arkansas (Republicans)
10:00 PM
Right now Bernie is the projected winner in Colorado and Clinton is projected in Minnesota and Massachusetts. It’s looking likely to be Trump in Vermont and Arkansas.
Apparently Trump is talking right now — Chris Christie, his new best friend, is with him looking dead behind the eyes. I’m not watching it because honestly, I just cannot tonight! But don’t worry, Twitter is On It.
Things Trump is "going to do great with":
・ "Women"
・ "Women's health issues"
・ "The hispanics"
・ "The African Americans"#SuperTuesday— Intelligencer (@intelligencer) March 2, 2016
Cruz is talking also! I am also not watching it because there is probably only one glass of wine left in my box of wine and that is just not going to cut it. Those who are watching report he is “going hard on Planned Parenthood and Jesus.” Sources also suggest “Cruz has officially jumped a rockettes line of sharks.”
And it’s Donald Trump in Arkansas. Clinton has maintained her slim lead in Massachusetts, a race in which I admit to being personally overly invested in as a MA native.
Minnesota is projected to be Rubio and Sanders, so far. Colorado still looks good for Bernie. Minnesota, what is going on in you that Rubio and Sanders are leading in you — especially Rubio, who has struck out so hard tonight otherwise that I almost feel embarrassed for him? Genuinely, I am interested in what the deal is there! Trump is in third in Minnesota with 21% currently, the worst he’s done in any state all night.
It is being said that Massachusetts is going to Clinton! From what I can see, her support is based largely (though not entirely) in the greater Boston metro area, with more Sanders support in Western MA. Trump’s support in MA didn’t seem to vary as much geographically, although there was more support for Kasich in the Concord/Waltham/Acton area.
A take from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight:
Clinton beating demographic targets by 16 points tonight = super bad news for Sanders. https://t.co/6bmLaUxRmO
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 2, 2016
Wait, this is a great question? Jim Gilmore has dropped out of the race, y’all. And most people didn’t know he was running even before that. Hold on while I investigate this.
How did Jim Gilmore win 47 percent of the Republican primary vote in Chelsea, Massachusetts? https://t.co/vjiOIWCKNh #SuperTuesday
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 2, 2016
Some are saying it’s because of this — Chelsea did a random drawing to see which GOP candidate would be at the top of the GOP section of the ballot, and Gilmore won, so it seems that a surprisingly large group of Chelsea voters just filled in the bubble at the top, not caring too much what the name was. This still doesn’t answer a question I have about why Gilmore was in the drawing at all since he’s dropped out — maybe there was a cutoff for being included in primaries and he stayed in past it? A small, strange micro-parable about this election season.
11:00 pm
NBC has called Colorado for Bernie.
NBC News just called the Colorado Democratic caucus for Bernie Sanders: https://t.co/p9eBvfAV4z #SuperTuesday
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 2, 2016
It appears that Minnesota may be going for Rubio.
Stop the presses. Marco Rubio has won a state. https://t.co/A27pcTQToy
— Ginger Gibson (@GingerGibson) March 2, 2016
12:00 PM (EST)
Well, pals, we’re entering the home stretch. What’s changed? Minnesota has been officially called for Sanders as well as Rubio. Donald Trump won Vermont, despite Kasich looking like he sort of had a shot maybe for a second there. Everyone is tired; my cat started chewing on an extension cord to indicate her displeasure with our shared activity. So what does it all, like, mean?
It seems pretty well agreed upon that this was a good night for Clinton; she took seven states to Sanders’ four, and one of Sanders’ four was the state where he’s been a senator. She has plenty of delegates, had overwhelming support from Black voters and in particular Black women, and seems well on track towards the Dem nomination.
What happened with the GOP? Well, the answers there are up to more interpretation. Although most people are going with “Rubio flopped” as a takeaway from tonight, the fact is that three different GOP candidates won primary states, and so it seems unlikely that there will be a mass exodus out of the race (although I don’t think Kasich will stay in too much longer (although I also didn’t think he would stay in this long, so idk)). It’s likely Cruz and Rubio will march stubbornly on, which may divide the GOP base and preclude there being a clear alternative to Trump within the party. (FiveThirtyEight has a take on this as a prisoner’s dilemma.)
If Rubio had a bad night, does that mean Trump won? He certainly won the most states and delegates, and in terms of delegate numbers is considered “on track” to have enough at this point to be the nominee. There’s some disagreement about whether he “dominated,” though. Nate Cohn at the NYT argues that the night was a pretty solid slam dunk for Trump, evidence that Trump while could be beaten by another GOP candidate, but probably won’t be. He considers Rubio Trump’s most credible opponent, and thinks that if he bombed, Trump’s path is pretty clear.
On the other hand, at FiveThirtyEight, the idea is considered that if multiple candidates are picking up states in primaries, the field is wider open than it might seem; “I don’t know why folks are walking away from tonight with the idea that Trump is somehow dominant. He’s won only 37 percent of the vote, pooling across states. That means he’s ahead but far from being a lock of any sort.”
Nothing about this election has been predictable so far, and so it seems at this point like it would be foolish to make any sweeping predictions based on tonight, but there’s certainly lots to consider! Thanks for being here with us while we breathlessly refreshed.
