Warren’s campaign had signaled as recently as Sunday that she would stay in the race all the way to the Democratic convention this summer. But her dismal performance this week combined with Joe Biden’s resurgence led her to conclude that she no longer had a viable path forward.

Warren had been holed up in Massachusetts since Tuesday to “assess” the race with her team. In an email to staffers Wednesday, campaign manager Roger Lau acknowledged that Tuesday’s results “fell well short of viability goals and projections, and we are disappointed in the results.” The campaign had projected coming in the top two in at least eight of the 14 states that voted Tuesday, but failed to hit that mark in any of them.

While she looks likely to collect several dozen delegates, that’s far fewer than the significant number her team had expected.

Warren’s campaign had gone on hiatus since Super Tuesday, sending no fundraising emails and going largely silent on social media.

Warren's exit marks the departure of the last viable female candidate in the race after a historically diverse field of women and people of color. The race has winnowed down to two white men in their late 70s, a former vice president and the runner-up in the last presidential primary.

According to a person with her campaign, Warren is contemplating not endorsing in the 2020 race, endorsing Bernie Sanders, or even endorsing Joe Biden, behind whom the more moderate candidates have consolidated. In the past week, former presidential candidates Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg, and Beto O’Rourke have all thrown their support behind the former vice president, which helped propel him to victories across the country Tuesday, including in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.

A Warren endorsement would be welcome news for Sanders, who had hoped to rack up a significant delegate lead on Super Tuesday and now likely finds himself behind Biden. Sanders and Warren have been friends and ideological allies since well before Warren became a politician, but their relationship has frayed over the course of the campaign.

It hit a low point in January when the two got in a heated exchange after a debate. The fight was over whether Sanders had told Warren he didn’t believe a woman could beat President Donald in 2020, which Warren asserted was true and Sanders denied.

Warren, a progressive star since she stormed on the national political scene with her take-no-prisoners rhetoric and policy activism during the 2008 financial crisis, was long considered a top contender in 2020. But her candidacy was a rollercoaster. She squandered much goodwill at the start by publicly releasing a DNA test to try to justify her past claims of Native American ancestry — a move she later apologized for and attempted to scrub from the internet.

After becoming the first major candidate to enter the presidential contest, Warren struggled to raise money or attract public support in the first few months of last year. Slowly, however, she campaigned her way into frontrunner status. Her steady stream of newsy policy proposals gave rise to the slogan, “Warren has a plan for that.” She caught fire in the summer and early fall, peaking with a 20,000-person September rally in New York City.

But as Warren struggled to explain her position on health care and faced a pincer attack from the left and center, her support waned. After disappointing third- and fourth-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire — the states she had bet much of her candidacy on — Warren briefly revived her bid with a commanding debate performance in Las Vegas.

The debate produced a financial windfall that temporarily kept her candidacy afloat. But it did not ultimately translate to more votes.

Still, Warren took satisfaction in her debate performance that helped torpedo the cash-rich candidacy of Michael Bloomberg. She told her staff: "In this campaign, we have been willing to fight, and, when necessary, we left plenty of blood and teeth on the floor. And I can think of one billionaire who has been denied the chance to buy this election."