On Sunday, people cast their votes in Howell, Michigan.

Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

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Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

For more 2024 election coverage from NPR Network, visit our live updates page.

The turbulent 2024 campaign is over.

Tens of millions of voters have already cast their general election ballots, and millions more will do the same on Election Day Tuesday, before polls close and results begin to be announced.

Here are some things to keep in mind on Election Day and beyond:

First of all… you still do it must vote? More than 20 states offer same-day voter registration on Election Day. Before you go to vote, you can check your polling station and any ID requirements again.

You may still have time to troubleshoot postal voting errors. Almost all states offer online ballot tracking, and for voters who are made aware of problems with their mail-in ballots, many states allow voters to correct those errors beyond Election Day.

Be wary of rumors and unfounded claims. The political atmosphere is tense, and rumors of electoral malpractice and fake videos can spread online before trustworthy sources have a chance to correct the facts. Here are some tips to avoid sharing election misinformation.

Also remember that elections are run by people – many of whom are volunteers – and that people sometimes make mistakes, especially when they are under pressure and scrutiny. Every election day there are isolated problems at polling stations; They probably don't mean anything nefarious is going on.

The campaigns are focused on seven swing states. Polling averages have shown a dead heat in the seven states expected to decide the presidential election. Here they are final Polling deadlines for these states, in chronological order:

• 7pm ET – Georgia
• 7:30 p.m. ET – North Carolina
• 8 p.m. ET – Pennsylvania
• 9pm ET – Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin
• 10 p.m. ET – Nevada

All polling station closing times can be found here.

Also remember that as Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump battle for the top spot, these seven swing states have independent and third-party presidential candidates on the ballot whose vote counts could influence the outcome.

Once the first results are available, patience is required. It takes a while to accurately count millions of ballots with many contests. Election officials will always emphasize that the results announced on election night are unofficial and that it is media organizations that call elections.

NPR relies on The Associated Press for race calls, and AP has a long track record of accuracy. Learn more about how the AP makes these decisions here. The most important factor in a race call is how close the competition is.

A candidate who appears to be a “leader” may be overtaken by another candidate. A number of factors influence how quickly votes can be counted.

For example, mail-in ballots come in envelopes that must be opened and have signatures or other identifying information that must be verified. Some states, including the swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, do not allow these mail-in ballots to be preprocessed for tally until Election Day, slowing the count even further. And Arizona's massive Maricopa County is expecting voters to cast hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots on Election Day.

Because there are partisan differences in voter methods and the geographic locations from which votes come, the results will shift. Of course, all voices are equal; some are added to the total later.

The terms “Blue Shift” and “Red Fata Morgana” really entered the vocabulary in 2020. They describe a phenomenon that played out across the Electoral College map — as mail-in ballots cast primarily by Democratic voters in places like Pennsylvania wiped out an early Republican lead in the presidential election (and became a major source of Trump misinformation become).

Compared to the 2020 pandemic election, there were fewer requests for absentee ballots this year, so many experts expect these partisan shifts to be less pronounced. The nonprofit Protect Democracy published a useful report with expected vote totals for each of the seven top swing states. The group cited earlier postal voting deadlines and expanded pre-processing in certain places as further reasons why the results could be faster in 2024.

But again, the proximity of a race is the determining factor in how long it takes to find out who wins.

Just because a candidate declares victory does not mean they have won. In 2020, Trump made comments on election night, citing baseless allegations of fraud: “Frankly, we won this election.”

Trump also has not committed to accepting the results of the 2024 race.

There has already been a wave of litigation surrounding election rules, and many experts see the lawsuits from Trump's Republican allies as laying the groundwork for possible election challenges.

The elections are not over yet. Here too, the results reported on election night are unofficial. Election officials will review and complete these counts before certification. For the presidential election, the Electoral College process includes several steps leading up to Inauguration Day.

And what about recounts? Each state has its own rules — and Arizona, for example, raised its automatic recount threshold for statewide contests from 0.1% to 0.5%. (For comparison, in 2020, Trump lost Arizona by 0.3%.)

However, recounts are very rare, and it is even rarer for recounts to reverse a result.