After months of enduring an avalanche of pundits, polls and ads, voters are finally having their say.

Millions of Americans across the country are ready to head to the polls, where they will choose on Tuesday whether to send Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump to the Oval Office.

A forceful campaign exposed deep ideological divisions between the two parties and a huge gender gap between Harris and Trump: Women support Harris by a margin of 16 percentage points and men support Trump by 18 points, according to the latest NBC News poll.

More than 77.3 million people have already cast their votes by mail and in person early, according to an NBC News analysis.

But both candidates believe their fate depends on seven battleground states that will ultimately decide the race. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina ended up consuming the campaign’s most precious resources: time and money. Hundreds of millions of dollars in ads blanketed the airwaves on the battlefields as Harris and Trump held large-scale rival rallies.

On Tuesday, Trump plans to vote in person in his home state of Florida with his wife, Melania. He will then host members and major donors for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend the night. Once the results are known, Trump will head to the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Meanwhile, Harris, who closed Monday night with a final rally at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the steps made famous in the “Rocky” movies, is back in Washington. You’ve already voted early by mail in California. On Tuesday night, after voting closes, he will return to his alma mater, Howard University in Washington.

On the eve of the election, Harris and Trump raced to those swing states to make their final speeches, each focusing primarily on Pennsylvania, those states’ biggest electoral prize.

Harris, who could become the first female president, campaigned to restore abortion rights and protect democracy, while promising to support a “care economy” that would help first-time homeowners, small businesses and the elderly.

Trump often used dark images and sometimes violent – rhetoric, promising to restore the economy and deport millions of immigrants.

Both campaigns projected confidence Monday.

“The momentum is on our side. Can you feel it? We have momentum, right? Because our campaign has tapped into the ambitions, aspirations and dreams of the American people,” Harris said in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “We are optimistic and excited about what we will do together, and here we know that it is time for a new generation of leadership in America.”

Trump made similar proclamations at a rally in North Carolina.

“I hope everything goes well; We are very ahead. The only thing we have to do is close, we have to close it,” he said. “The truth is that I hate that expression, but we are the ones who lose. Does that make sense to you? It’s ours to lose. If we get everyone out to vote, there will be nothing they can do. And if we don’t do it, and if we don’t do it, they have to catch every person who ever signed anything in that horrendously dangerous party that is going to destroy our country, and is already destroying our country.”

The final day of voting ends a wild and at times jarring 15 weeks after President Joe Biden stopped seeking the Democratic nomination and threw his support behind Harris. Meanwhile, Trump withstood two assassination attempts, including one in which he was grazed by a bullet.

Democrats welcomed Harris’ entry into the race, setting fundraising records and volunteering and registering to vote in droves. Trump secured the Republican nomination, even though he now has a criminal conviction and faces additional felony charges.

Forecasters have for weeks predicted a deadlocked race that has been within the polls’ margins of error. Harris’ cash-laden campaign has deployed a massive ground game in battleground states aimed at getting her voters to the polls. Republicans worried about their own post-Trump ground operation outsourced probing efforts to third parties, on which multiple reports have been made. documented agitation.

Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a briefing with reporters on Monday that the campaign saw multiple paths to reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, including the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, as well as Arizona, the northern United States. Carolina and Georgia. Biden won all of those states in 2020, except North Carolina.

“I would say in Georgia we like what we are seeing. We see that we are on track to win a very close race here. And in fact, as we’ve been watching day by day as we got closer to the deadline, we saw that in Georgia, in particular, the early voting numbers were getting younger and more diverse every day,” O’Malley Dillon . saying. “We saw African-American voters get a larger share of the total vote and we’re seeing pretty high numbers overall for our overall turnout.”

Trump’s campaign has boasted strong early voting turnout among Republicans in states including Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, a change from 2020, after the party made a concerted effort to rack up points in the front part.

“President Donald J. Trump enters Election Day stronger than in any previous election, and if patriots across the country maintain the momentum and turn out as expected on Election Day, we will swear in President Trump in January.” Tim Saler, a data consultant for Trump and the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.

Harris’ team warned Monday that election results in some states could take a couple of days, indicating that a delay in vote counting is expected and would not be a sign of voter fraud. Trump, who has not yet acknowledged his 2020 loss against Biden, has begun laying the foundation challenge the election results if he loses again.

Polls begin to close completely in states at 7 pm ET, including the battleground state of Georgia.