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Welcome to the Final Hours of the 2016 Election by Sam Frizell

ELECTION 2016

After a bitter, eighteen-month-long election that exposed some of the nation’s most painful divisions and shook its democratic institutions, Americans prepared on Tuesday morning to cast their ballots for president.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will both wake up on Election Day, Nov. 8 after whirlwind tours of the nation’s battleground states from Ohio to North Carolina and Nevada to await the results. By the time they return home to sleep on Tuesday night, one of them will be the president-elect.

Until the last moment, both candidates urged their supporters to go out and vote.

“Years from today, when your kids and grandkids asked what you did in 2016 when everything was on the line, I want you to be able to say you did vote!” Clinton said in Philadelphia on Monday night. “You voted for an inclusive, big-hearted open-minded country.”

“I’m asking you to dream big. It will be the greatest vote you ever cast in your lifetimes,” Trump said in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Monday evening. “We’re going to have a great victory tomorrow, folks. They have no idea."

Clinton's campaign staff shipped out of their offices in Brooklyn, New York, luggage in hand as they knocked on doors in swing states at a frenetic pace. Trump crisscrossed the country at a relentless pace, holding rallies in deep-blue Michigan and planning events on Election Day. Some 42 million Americans have already voted; by Tuesday night, more people are likely to have voted than in any other election.

As voters headed to the polls, Clinton maintained a slight but firm lead over Trump and an advantage in battleground states. But the outcome of the race was far from assured and Trump has tightened the gap with Clinton in the last two weeks. Both limped into Election Day, damaged by self-inflicted wounds.

It has been a nasty election. On the morning of Nov. 8, the nation is more divided by race, gender, education class and geography than it has been in recent memory. Trust in public institutions—including the press, Congress and the vote itself—are at new lows, due in large part to the tumult in this year's election. Clinton and Trump are among the most disliked major-party nominees in history. No matter who wins on Tuesday night, the next president will have a difficult task of healing the country.

The two candidates could not have been more different in tone and style in the final days of the campaign.

Clinton called on the country to reject Trump's message, saying it was one of fear, division and hate. She surrounded herself with celebrities, calling on the political and musical glitterati for her last few days of campaigning including musicians Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Jay, Beyonce and Katy Perry; President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama; and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

On Monday, Clinton rallied in Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia and Raleigh, maintaining a positive message and calling on her supporters to counter Trump’s message of “anger.”

“Anger is not a plan,” she told supporters in Cleveland, Ohio, at a rally on Sunday with basketball star LeBron James.

“I love our country and believe in our people. My faith in our future has never been stronger,” she said the next day at her marquee rally at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Monday night. “I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became.”

“It’s not your fault!” an audience member shouted back.

Trump rallied in Sarasota, Fla.; Raleigh, North Carolina; Scranton, Pa.; and Manchester N.H.; and relentlessly criticized his rival’s use of a private email server, attacked the media and called for a new order in Washington, D.C. He called for an end to corruption and promised to bring jobs and wealth “back” to the United States.

Clinton "should not be allowed to run for president and she’s being protected by a rigged system,” Trump said on Monday. “Now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box tomorrow. You’ve got to get out and vote. Let’s swamp them.”

The campaigns struggled to accurately read the flurry of early votes, cast in record numbers. Of the more than 42 million early votes cast, Hispanic participation skyrocketed, while votes cast by African-Americans declined compared with 2012.

Election Day will be a difficult climb for Trump. He could win all the difficult battleground states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire and Iowa and he still would not have the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the presidency. If Clinton wins Florida or Ohio, Trump's campaign is almost certainly over.

Clinton holds a slight but firm lead over Trump in national polls, leading her Republican opponent by about 3 percentage points, according to polling averages. But the Democratic nominee was up by as many as seven points just weeks earlier.

The 2016 campaign was remarkable for the velocity and magnitude of scandals. Clinton’s use of a private email server as Secretary of State rocked her campaign from the beginning, raising questions about transparency and her handling of classified information.

But Trump’s virulent nationalism is unprecedented among successful major party candidates. His repeated bankruptcies and his non-payment of contractors damaged his credibility as a businessman and his incendiary proposals about banning Muslims from entering the United States and deporting undocumented immigrants damaged him in the general election.

Both candidates withstood a late-breaking wave of surprise revelations. A tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault surfaced in early October, followed by about a dozen accusations from women who said he assaulted them.

The Clinton campaign dealt with a late announcement by FBI director James Comey announcing the bureau had found additional Clinton emails. (On Sunday, Comey said the FBI had found nothing in the emails to make it revisit its decision not to charge Clinton with a crime.)

All of the controversy made for a disillusioned electorate that was as often voting against the other candidate as for their own team.

Clinton has been running for president for 576 days, and Trump for 511. They both ate pork on a stick at the Iowa State Fair in the summer of 2015, braved the winter primaries in New Hampshire and Michigan, and mocked each other at a glitzy dinner in Manhattan hosted by a local cardinal.

But their campaign styles were vastly different. Clinton raised $1.3 billion by the middle of October, while Trump raised just $800 million. Clinton relied on an highly sophisticated data and field operation and many millions in campaign advertising, while Trump relied on large rallies, almost no get-out-the-vote operations and campaign aides who were often novices.

Clinton helped the Democrats raise money at record rates, relying on a new fundraising mechanism in the wake of the Supreme Court's McCutcheon decision, which allows candidates to raise huge sums for coordinated committees. Trump took advantage of the same rules but with less success.

In the Democratic primary, Clinton faced a surprisingly tough and long-lasting primary challenge from Sanders, who rallied much of the anti-Washington sentiment on the left against her. He took liberal positions calling for free, universal healthcare and free tuition at public colleges. Sanders ultimately endorsed her after the two hashed out the outlines of the Democratic Party platform.

Trump’s with war with the leaders of his party began in the Republican primary. He has insulted them as feckless, know-nothing politicians, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (a “disgrace”), Sen. John McCain (“a hero because he was captured”), Carly Fiorina (“look at that face”), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (“low-energy”) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (“ineffective”). Then he shocked the party’s Establishment by defeating a deep Republican field.

Clinton has pitched herself as an effective manager in Washington, a “fighter” for children and families and calling herself a “progressive who likes to get things done.” She vowed at the end of her campaign to heal the country’s divides and called for a more tolerant country.

"This election, in many ways, is about what kind of future our country will have," Clinton said at a black church in Philadelphia the Sunday before election day. "It is about choosing hope over fear, unity over division and love over hate."

Trump aimed his message at working class voters and rusty factory towns that have fallen upon hard times, promising to bring back jobs and shatter conventions in Washington. His hardline immigration proposals spoke to a sense of cultural loss in many parts of the country.

And on the last day of his campaign, Trump began like he started: reveling in his crowds and relishing the attention. "Look at these people and look at this enthusiasm," Trump said in Scranton. "There's nothing like it."

How to Follow the Results on Election Day by haleysweetlandedwards .

ELECTION 2016

When it comes to hour-by-hour and, in some cases, minute-by-minute Election Day horse race results, many political scientists say you're better off avoiding it all. Close Twitter. Minimize your browser. Throw your phone in a lake.

That's partly because while day-of projections, which are based on voter turnout numbers and historical voting patterns, are good at providing a glimpse into the right now, they often don't reflect bigger picture trends. For example, younger voters, who tend to procrastinate on getting to the polls, and blue collar voters, who are less likely to have the kind of job that you can leave for an hour in the middle of the day, won't always show up in voter turn-out tallies until after 5:30 pm.Day-of polls also aren't good at detecting aberrations in voting patterns. If significant numbers of people who have never voted before show up to the polls, as Donald Trump has promised, or certain demographic groups, such as Latinos, end up turning out in record-high numbers, turnout-based models won't show that.Read More: Here’s What You Should Watch on Election Day

Another reason to avoid day-of results, some political scientists argue, is that they may have the effect of depressing voter turnout in the evening hours. "It's not just the presidential race you have to think about," Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told TIME. "It's the down-ballot races in all the Western states."If Democrats in California can see that, say, Clinton is ahead in early results by a significant margin, Kamarck said, voters in that state may decide to avoid the hassle of going to the polls after work, which could help Republicans in both gubernatorial and statewide races, as well as local contests. Largely in deference to such fears, the biggest news outlets—ABC, [f500link]CBS[/f500link], NBC, CNN and Fox, as well as radio stations, newspapers, wire services, and websites—redoubled their pledge before Congress to avoid calling a contest until the polls close in that state.New, public-facing websites like VoteCastr.com promise to disrupt that tradition, which they see as unnecessarily precious in a 24-hour news cycle.Starting Election Day morning, VoteCastr, in partnership with Slate, will publish up-to-date poll results every three hours throughout the day. Sasha Issenberg, a journalist and partner with VoteCastr, described the traditional news outlets' "self-imposed gag order" as a disservice to the public interest and argued that that there's "scant evidence" that calling elections before polls close have affected turn out.VoteCastr, which is backed by a bipartisan team of election veterans, including Blaise Hazelwood, former political director of the Republican National Committee, and Ken Strasma, who headed up micro-targeting for Barack Obama in 2008, will collect data from thousands of precincts across 17 battleground states, borrowing a strategy long used by candidates, parties and SuperPACs.[time-gallery id="4559436"]

In an interview with TIME, Strasma was cautiously optimistic about the accuracy of the effort. "Any poll depends on the pollsters' assumptions of the make up of the electorate," he said. "So with VoteCastr, they're looking at past polling and surveys and then, on Election Day, saying, 'OK, based on who we're are actually seeing turn out, we can reasonably expect these people in this precinct to vote in this way." In 2012, the Obama campaign used virtually the same method to predict that in Hamilton County, Ohio, their candidate would win 56.4 percent of the early vote. In an article for Slate, Issenberg pointed out that their guess ended up being just two-tenths of a percent away from the final count.Tim Saler, vice president of the research firm Grassroots Targeting and former deputy campaign manager to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, was also encouraging, but reiterated that the real magic was in the modeling. In Colorado in 2012, the Romney campaign cited public polling showing their candidate doing well among independents, Saler said. But those polls missed the fact that people who were identifying as independent, because that's the way they thought of themselves, were actually registered Republicans. So on Election Day, Romney did much worse in Colorado than his campaign's projections showed, Saler told TIME. "You have to avoid falling into the trap of misrepresenting the baseline," he said.The take-home message, said Roger Tourangeau, the president of the Association for Public Opinion Research, is that while many of these models have become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade, with vastly more public polling and deep historical records on voter behavior, none of it is perfect. The only surefire way to know who won an election is to wait for AP vote tallies, which will come in after polls close or early the next morning, or to count every last vote, including absentee, overseas, and preliminary ballots—an impressive logistical endeavor that will be complete by the end of the week.If you want to avoid that roller-coaster feeling Election Day, wait until the polls close to get excited.