Super Tuesday live updates: Biden wins Virginia Democratic primary, Vermont too early to call, NBC News projects

The Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in Vermont are too early to call, NBC News reported.

Polls closed at 7 p.m. ET in Vermont, which was the first state to open polling places on Super Tuesday.

– Dan Mangan

President Joe Biden will win the Democratic primary in Virginia, NBC News projects. The state is crucial to the incumbent’s path to reelection.

Virginia is represented by two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. But in 2021, the state’s voters elected a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, as governor.

Youngkin’s win recalibrated the political balance in a state that has been trending increasingly Democratic in recent election cycles.

— Christina Wilkie

Former president Donald Trump is leading in the Republican presidential primary in Virginia, but the race is too early to call, NBC News projects.

The Virginia primary there is open, meaning that anyone can vote in either party’s primary, regardless of his or her registration.

Exit polls across the commonwealth revealed a pessimistic electorate that overwhelmingly feels the U.S. economy is doing poorly.

Just 24% of Republican primary voters in an exit poll said that the economy was in “Excellent” or “Good” shape, while 75% of respondents described the economy as “Not so good,” or “Poor.”

One of the more surprising results of that exit polling was that President Joe Biden enjoyed a 21% approval rating among Republican primary voters in Virginia. That is a relatively high number given the fact that primary voters tend to be among their political party’s most partisan members.

Overall, election outcomes in Virginia have been steadily shifting to the left over the past decade.

But the results of the commonwealth’s 2021 governor’s race cast doubt on whether the Old Dominion has gone entirely blue.

Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor, and he has implemented a conservative policy agenda since he was sworn in.

– Christina Wilkie

Over half of Republican primary voters in North Carolina say they do not think President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election over Donald Trump, according to an NBC News exit poll.

Just 34% of respondents said they thought the Democratic president had won the election fairly.

Trump has spent the past four years stoking false conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from him. His efforts have produced a deep distrust in the integrity of U.S. elections among many Republican voters.

– Brian Schwartz

President Joe Biden’s political operation says it had a record grassroots fundraising haul in February.

 “This Super Tuesday, the split screen between our campaign and Donald Trump’s operation (if you can call it that!) couldn’t be more stark: President Biden continues to see record-breaking grassroots enthusiasm around a historic and winning agenda, while Donald Trump is poised to enter the general election broke, saddled by his unwavering support for the extremism Americans repeatedly reject at the ballot box – undermining our democracy, tax giveaways to the rich, and a national abortion ban,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty said in a statement.

CNBC asked the campaign for the exact numbers of this fundraising, but they did not reply to questions.

— Brian Schwartz

President Joe Biden is projected by NBC News to win the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.

Biden’s projected win is his first projected victory in Super Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses.

— Dan Mangan

More than double the number of Republicans turned out to vote as Democrats in Fairfax County, Virginia, a county that is currently represented by an all-blue delegation.

Fairfax County Votes, the official election tracker for the area, reported just before 4 p.m. ET on social media that the Democratic primary has seen 2.7% turnout versus the Republican primary’s 5.7%. Virginia’s polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

Though the party nominees of the 2024 race are nearly a foregone conclusion, Super Tuesday is an important test for unknown variables such as voter turnout, which can be read as an indicator of voter enthusiasm and could be a deciding factor in a Biden-Trump rematch.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Republican primary voters in California said the economy is the most important issue for their vote, NBC News exit poll results showed.

That top issue, selected by a 43% plurality, was followed by immigration, which garnered 39%, in the exit poll.

The vast majority of those GOP voters, 78%, also said they thought Donald Trump would handle the economy better as president than Nikki Haley.

— Kevin Breuninger

Republicans in Utah will select their choice for the party’s nominee via caucus, while Democrats there are holding a traditional primary to choose their favorite candidate.

Republicans will gather at more than 2,300 meetings in precincts across the states to make their pick starting at 9 p.m. ET.

Democrats are voting during the day, with polls closing at 11 p.m. ET.

There are more than 890,000 registered Republicans in Utah, compared to fewer than 230,000 registered Democrats.

— Dan Mangan

“Anything’s better than Trump or Haley,” Denver voter Melissa Magalif told NBC News, before admitting she’s “not Biden’s biggest fan by any means.”

“I have been personally impacted by the policies that Trump made when he was president: immigration policies, Muslim ban, his Covid-era policies, and having been personally impacted by those things in a negative way, I just have to go with my gut on this one,” Magalif told reporter Jillian Frankel about submitting her mail-in ballot for Biden.

But, she added, the Biden administration will have a lot to answer for concerning its approach to the Israel-Hamas War. Magalif said she is a member of the Jewish-Israeli community and identifies as LGBT.

“That is kind of what scares me with this election is that because of how they’ve handled this situation, specifically, and how it’s so fresh in everybody’s minds, why it could end up going back to Trump,” she said. “So I think if they do win, they’re gonna have [to rebuild] the trust of the American people.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday called for an immediate six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas as part of a deal to release hostages.

— Chelsey Cox

Robert Kennedy Jr. is not on presidential primary ballots Tuesday due to his status as an independent candidate, but he still touted himself as an alternative to President Joe Biden and Donald Trump as voters went to the polls.

Kennedy retweeted an image summarizing a recent Fox News poll leading Biden and Trump by several percentage points among independent voters nationally.

“It’s clear Americans want to break free from the two-party system. Let’s unite around our shared values and get down to business,” Kennedy wrote in that X post. “Our elected officials spend more time fighting across the aisle than actually improving the lives of their constituents.”

Kennedy, who is a vaccine skeptic, later replied to an X post about Mandy Cohen, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announcing that an updated Covid-19 vaccine is expected to become available next fall.

“Because the first nine shots didn’t protect you,” Kennedy wrote.

— Dan Mangan

Billionaire Mark Cuban called Donald Trump a “snake oil salesperson” as he praised President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.

“I don’t want a snake oil salesperson as President,” Cuban told the news site Axios via email. “I’m voting for Biden/Harris over Trump all day every day.”

Cuban told Axios that Trump’s voters “are happy with their snake oil whether it works or not.”

He said he would support Biden even if the incumbent president were on his deathbed.

“If they were having his last wake, and it was him versus Trump, and he was being given last rites, I would still vote for Joe Biden,” Cuban said.

Cuban, who is now a minority owner in the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, was at the White House on Monday for a meeting about prescription drug costs. His two-year-old company Cost Plus Drug sells generic prescription drugs online.

— Dan Mangan

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has been quietly trying to recruit some of Nikki Haley’s wealthiest supporters to come over to their side, according to a person who recently heard from Trump’s campaign.

One of the asks to a top Haley financier occurred as recently as Monday, the eve of Super Tuesday, the person said. Some of the Trump camp’s charm offensive has been directed at her Wall Street donors, the person added.

Trump has beaten Haley in all but one of the primary contests so far, and he is expected to dominate the field on Super Tuesday, when more than 800 delegates are up for grabs.

A spokesman for Trump did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

— Brian Schwartz

First Lady Jill Biden is taking a more active role on the campaign trail as her husband, President Joe Biden, seeks another term in office.

But Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, appears to be keeping clear of the spotlight.

The former first lady has been almost completely absent from Trump’s latest presidential campaign, leaving him on his own as he gears up for a rematch with Biden. She has also declined to accompany her husband to his many court appearances as he fights 91 criminal charges and multiple high-profile civil penalties.

Trump said last fall that his wife will join him “pretty soon.” But that hasn’t happened in the runup to Super Tuesday.

Jill Biden, meanwhile, looks to be taking a more prominent role in the Democratic incumbent’s reelection bid.

In a speech in Atlanta on Friday, she lashed out at Trump over his treatment of women and stance on key women’s issues, including abortion rights.

“How far will he go? When will he stop? You know the answer: He won’t,” she said of Trump. The appearance was the first lady’s first stop on a three-day, four-state swing of key electoral battlegrounds.

A spokesperson for Melania Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

— Kevin Breuninger

With North Carolina’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein pursuing a gubernatorial bid, two lawmakers on Capitol Hill are looking to occupy his current office.

Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican hardliner, is the sole Republican candidate in the state’s attorney general race. He leaves behind a seat in a deep-red district that has sparked a GOP race to succeed him, featuring pastor Mark Harris who led a failed congressional run in 2018.

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson is competing on the Democratic side, in part due to the state’s redrawn congressional map, which effectively turned his purple district red. Attorney Tim Dunn and Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry are also in the Democratic running.

If none of the candidates in the North Carolina primaries secure a 30% majority or higher, the top two will head to a runoff on May 14.

— Rebecca Picciotto

This Super Tuesday, the top presidential candidates are working from home.

Donald Trump played golf Tuesday morning at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, a few minutes’ drive from his Mar-a-Lago resort home, a source told NBC News.

Trump’s campaign said the former president will deliver a speech at Mar-a-Lago in the evening.

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, returned to the White House on Tuesday morning after spending the weekend at Camp David.

He is slated to convene a White House council meeting in the afternoon to announce new actions to fight “corporate rip-offs.”

Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley told CNN on Friday that she will be in her home state of South Carolina on Tuesday night, even though the state already held its primary election, which she lost to Trump.

— Kevin Breuninger

A group of political action committees financed by the cryptocurrency industry spent just more than $13 million on congressional primary contests taking place on Super Tuesday, according to data from AdImpact.

The data shows that Fairshake, one of three crypto-backed PACs, has spent $9.5 million on television, radio and digital advertisements against Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., who is running for California’s open Senate seat in a massive primary fight against Democratic front-runner Rep. Adam Schiff.

Protect Progress, another crypto-supported committee, spent $1.7 million in support of Shomari Figures, a Democrat running in a primary campaign for Alabama’s 2nd congressional district.

Defend American Jobs spent more than $1 million backing two Republicans running for House seats in North Carolina.

— Brian Schwartz

Pop superstar Taylor Swift used her hugely popular Instagram account to urge followers to vote in the presidential primaries in her home state of Tennessee and elsewhere.

“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power,” Swift wrote in an Instagram Story post. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”

Swift then directed her 282 million followers to the link Vote.org to find information about their polling locations.

The singer backed President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Supporters of former President Donald Trump started criticizing Swift months ago, in the expectation that she would endorse Biden again.

Before the Super Bowl game in February, Swift was briefly the subject of a bizarre right-wing conspiracy that imagined that her romance with Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce was a stunt designed to help Biden’s reelection bid.

— Dan Mangan

Below is an alphabetical list of the states where Americans are casting ballots today.

The following states are holding both Democratic and Republican primaries:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Maine
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Vermont
• Virginia

In Utah, Democrats are holding a primary while Republicans are holding a caucus.

In Alaska, Republicans will caucus while Democrats are holding their primary on April 6.

Though Republicans already settled Iowa in the first primary of the season, Democratic ballots have been rolling in since January and are due to be released Tuesday.

— Rebecca Picciotto

The Colorado primary could offer Nikki Haley a rare opportunity to add to her delegate count. Former president Donald Trump is currently leading with 276 Republican delegates to Haley’s 43.

The state’s 37 delegates are awarded proportionally to candidates who win at least 20% of the vote. According to NBC News, Haley’s worst case scenario would still likely be a pickup of 10 delegates.

Haley typically performs better than Trump among Independents and center-right Republicans, according to Republican strategist Susan Del Percio. A third of the total votes cast so far in the Colorado presidential primary came from voters who were unaffiliated with either party, Axios reports.

Haley also draws outsize support from affluent, college-educated Republicans. Nearly half of Colorado’s population age 25 and older, 43.7%, have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, per the U.S. Census.

— Chelsey Cox

The biggest primary race to watch in the nation’s most populous state isn’t the one for president.

A crush of candidates are vying for the powerful Senate seat formerly held for two decades by Dianne Feinstein, who died in September. Sen. Laphonza Butler, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom picked to temporarily fill the vacancy, has opted not to run to keep the seat.

The Senate primary in California, which consistently votes blue in statewide contests, has largely looked like a three-way race between Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.

Schiff, who gained national prominence for his leading role in the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, has led the pack in ad spending and polling.

But Steve Garvey, a Republican former pro baseball player, has seen a late surge in the polls, even though his campaign has placed no TV ads.

That’s likely because the majority of Schiff’s broadcasts mention Garvey, while none mention Porter.

It’s a strategy that could pay off massively. California has an open primary, meaning voters can select any party’s candidate, and only the top two candidates will proceed to the general election.

If Schiff winds up competing against Garvey in the general, rather than Porter or Lee, he may have a better shot at winning in California, which hasn’t had a Republican senator since 1992.

— Kevin Breuninger

North Carolina’s primaries feature several competitive down-ballot races, including a closely watched gubernatorial primary to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, which could act as a bellwether of the battleground state’s leaning in November.

Gov. Cooper endorsed the state’s Attorney General Josh Stein to be his successor. But before Stein officially secures the incumbent party’s nomination, he will have to clear a crowded Democratic field. Stein is up against four opponents including former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Morgan.

If he is the Democratic nominee, Stein could face a November matchup against Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is leading the GOP pool so far and has Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Joe Biden is looking to flip North Carolina after Donald Trump narrowly won the state by just over one percent in the 2020 general election. If Republicans are able to turn Gov. Cooper’s seat red, it could signal how the swing state’s electorate is thinking about their options at the top of the ticket.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Super Tuesday primary voting began bright and as early as 6 a.m. ET in Vermont, with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump looking to cement their leads over their respective remaining intraparty opponents.

In the Republican primary, 17 delegates are up for grabs, while in the Democratic contest, there are 16 delegates at stake. Polls will close at 7 p.m. ET.

Vermont has an open primary system. Voters can choose in which party primary to vote, regardless of their personal political affiliation.

Vermont, which is the second-smallest state by population, will award just three votes in the Electoral College after the presidential election in November.

— Dan Mangan

The battle for California’s coveted open Senate seat is still a long way from the general election, but the contest is already the state’s most expensive Senate race of all time, by far.

Spending on the Golden State Senate race has topped $65.3 million, AdImpact reported on Feb. 29.

That’s 242% more spending than the last three California Senate races combined, according to AdImpact.

The difference underscores just how competitive the race for late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat has been compared to other elections in the reliably blue state.

— Kevin Breuninger