WASHINGTON – Election Day is almost upon us. In a few hours, the final votes in the 2024 presidential election will be cast.

In a deeply divided nation, the election is a real battle between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

We know there are seven battleground states that will decide the outcome, barring a major surprise. But major questions remain about the timing of the results, the makeup of the electorate, the influx of misinformation — even the possibility of political violence. At the same time, both sides are preparing for a protracted legal battle that could complicate matters further.

Here’s what to watch on the eve of Election Day 2024:

History will be made anyway

With all the twists and turns of the last few months, it’s easy to overlook the historic significance of this election.

Harris would become the first female president in the 248-year history of the United States. She would also be the first black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the position. Harris and her campaign largely downplayed gender and race, fearing it might alienate some supporters. But the significance of a Harris victory would not be lost on historians.

A Trump victory would represent another kind of historic achievement. He would become the first person convicted of a crime to be elected to the US presidency after being convicted of 34 felony charges in a New York hush-hush case just over five months earlier.

Trump, who still faces felony charges in at least two separate criminal cases, has argued that he is the victim of a politicized justice system. And it seems that tens of millions of voters believe him — or are willing to overlook his extraordinary legal baggage.

How long will it take to know the winner?

Election Day in the United States is now often considered Election Week, as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots — not to mention legal challenges — that can delay results. But the truth is, no one knows how long it will take until the winner is announced this time.

In 2020, the Associated Press declared President Joe Biden the winner Saturday afternoon — four days after the polls closed. But even then, the AP called North Carolina for Trump 10 days after Election Day and Georgia for Biden 16 days later after manual recounts.

Four years earlier, the 2016 election was decided just hours after most polls had closed. The AP declared Trump the winner on election night at 2:29 a.m. (it was technically Wednesday morning on the East Coast).

This time, both campaigns see the race as extremely close in the seven swing states expected to decide the election, barring one major surprise: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The size of the map and the tightness of the race make it difficult to predict when a winner might be declared.

Where can I find early clues about how the contest might play out?

Look at two battleground states on the East Coast, North Carolina and Georgia, where results could come relatively quickly. That doesn’t mean we’ll get the final results quickly in those states if the returns are close, but these are the first swing states that might give an idea of ​​the kind of night we’re in for.

To dig deeper, look at the urban and suburban areas in the industrial North and Southeast where Democrats have made gains since 2020.

In North Carolina, Harris’ edges in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, home to the state capital of Raleigh and the state’s largest city, Charlotte, respectively, will reveal how much Trump will need to pull from less-populated rural areas on who dominated them. .

In Pennsylvania, Harris needs a big turnout in deep-blue Philadelphia, but is also looking to increase the Democratic advantage in the arc of suburban counties north and west of the city. She campaigned aggressively in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties, where Biden improved Clinton’s winning margins in 2016. The Philadelphia metro area, including the four collar counties, accounts for 43 percent of the Pennsylvania vote.

Elsewhere in the Blue Wall, Trump needs to stem Democratic growth in key suburban Michigan counties outside Detroit, particularly Oakland County. He faces the same challenge in Wisconsin’s Waukesha County, outside of Milwaukee.

Where are the candidates?

Trump is likely to spend the early hours of Election Day in Michigan, where he is scheduled to hold a final late-night rally in Grand Rapids, as has become his tradition.

The Republican nominee plans to spend the rest of the day in Florida, where he is expected to vote in person — despite previously saying he would vote early. He is scheduled to hold a campaign watch party in Palm Beach on Tuesday night.

Harris plans to attend an election night party at Howard University in Washington, a historically black university where she graduated with a degree in economics and political science in 1986 and was an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Other than Howard, she has no public schedule announced for Election Day.

Harris said Sunday that he “just filled out” his mail-in ballot and was “on his way to California.”

Who’s left to show up on election day?

On the eve of Election Day, it is unclear which voters will show up to vote on Tuesday.

More than 77 million people participated in early voting – either in person or by mail. So many people have already voted that some officials say polls in states like Georgia could be a “ghost town” on Election Day.

One major reason for the increase is that Trump has generally encouraged his supporters to vote this time, a reversal from 2020, when he asked Republicans to vote only in person on Election Day. Early voting numbers confirm that millions of Republicans have heeded Trump’s call in recent weeks.

The key question, however, is whether the surge in early voting Republicans this time will ultimately cannibalize the number of Republicans showing up on Tuesday.

There are changes on the Democratic side as well. Four years ago, as the pandemic lingered, Democrats overwhelmingly voted early. But this time, without the risk to public health, more Democrats are likely to show up in person on Election Day.

This balance on both sides is critical as we try to understand early returns. And he’s campaigning to know which voters still need to show up on Tuesday. On this front, Democrats may have an advantage.

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have outsourced much of the operation of the get-out-the-vote operation to outside groups, including one funded largely by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk, who is facing fresh questions about his practices. Harris’s campaign, by contrast, runs a more traditional operation that includes more than 2,500 paid staffers and 357 offices in battleground states alone.

Could it be anxiety?

Trump has aggressively promoted baseless claims in recent days that cast doubt on the integrity of the election. He falsely insists that he can only lose if the Democrats cheat, even though the polls show the race to be a real toss.

Trump could claim victory again on election night regardless of the results, just as he did in 2020.

Such rhetoric can have dire consequences, as the nation saw when Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, one of the darkest days in modern American history. And unfortunately, there is still the potential for additional violence this election season.

The Republican National Committee will have thousands of “election integrity” poll monitors in place on Tuesday looking for any signs of fraud, which critics fear could lead to voter or poll worker harassment. In some key polling places, officials have called for the presence of sheriff’s deputies, in addition to bulletproof windows and panic buttons that connect poll managers to a local 911 dispatcher.

At the same time, Trump’s allies note that he has faced two assassination attempts in recent months that raise the possibility of new threats against him. And police in Washington and other cities are bracing for the possibility of serious unrest on Election Day.

As always, it’s worth noting that a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, many of them Republicans, found the 2020 election to be the “safest” in American history.