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It’s finally here: the stump speeches have wrapped. The super PAC ads have done their damage. The Bruce Springsteen and Kid Rock riffs have faded. And in a matter of hours (we hope), we’ll know how this whole thing ends. For complete breaking coverage of the election results, set your browser to The Daily Beast’s homepage starting at 7 p.

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Election Day 2012 may be remembered for a long night of vote tallying, a serious upset, or a victory speech for the history books.But that all comes later.Twitter and Facebook overflowed Tuesday, not with messages of support for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney but with dispatches about the widespread insanity that plagued polling states around the country.

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The grueling campaign season is over (collective sigh) but the real race for the presidency has just begun. The Daily Beast takes a peek at polling stations across the nation. Go vote!

The Daily Beast’s map of the Electoral College results—updated live as they come in.

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Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, one of President Obama’s more ubiquitous surrogates, has been so busy doing Election Day television interviews that he’ll need to find time to weep as the returns come in tonight.

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Like many Americans, I take seriously the sacred privilege of being an American and exercising my right to vote each Election Day. Yet, as of the writing of this piece, surprisingly, I am still “undecided” in this hotly contested, very close presidential election.

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Keep an eye on Virginia.When you’re sitting down with a table full of snacks to watch the Election Night returns, when you’re being inundated by exit polls and magic-wall graphics, here are a few simple keys to figuring out where the race is headed.

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1. Favorite BooksSong of Solomon by Toni Morrison (Obama) vs. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Romney)Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Obama) vs. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Romney)Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Obama) vs.

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There was a traffic jam on the highway leading to the early voting station in Franklin County, Ohio, on Monday. Inside the former box store, lines snaked around the showroom floor with voters waiting more or less patiently for an hour or more.

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No matter who wins the presidency on Tuesday, one outcome is all but certain: Barack Obama will draw less support and fewer votes after four years as president than he did as an untried, little-known, freshman senator from Illinois.

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And it's a—tie? The first votes were cast in Dixville Notch, the tiny New Hampshire town that votes at midnight each year, and the candidates tied at five votes each--the first tie in the town's history. "Considering the way things are polling around the country, we may have been the first tie of the day," said town clerk Dick Erwin.

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It was an oddly anticlimactic homecoming.            After an endless day of crisscrossing the Rust Belt—President Obama’s last day ever of campaigning for himself—his landing in Chicago was notable for its ordinariness. There were no cheering crowds, not even a rope line.

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There’s no way to know whether there will be another Florida-like recount in 2012, but neither presidential campaign is taking any chances. Thousands of lawyers are being deployed for Election Day in every battleground state in preparation for what would be, in terms of magnitude and rarity, the electoral equivalent of Hurricane Sandy.

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WIN: Election Night in Grant Park, ChicagoIt was a historic moment for America: the votes had been counted on Nov. 4, 2008, and Barack Hussein Obama, who campaigned on the ideals of “hope” and “change,” became the first black man to win the presidency.

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As the 2012 presidential campaign has reached its apex, the chatter among the warring Mitt Romney and Barack Obama camps has devolved into an “ours is bigger than yours” crowd-size envy. You got 10,000 at Red Rocks? We got 23,000 at a high school in Hollywood, Fla.