From the Big Bird memes to the animated GIFs of the candidates to the non-stop Invisible Obama jokes, the 2012 Election as a whole has been one of the most shared and commented-on events in social media history. And on the final day of the election, the social media wheels were churning at a record pace.

Below you will find the highlights of what is being tweeted, liked, pinned, and Instagrammed on this historical night - and now, into the morning of the next day.

The Photos and Memes

Did you hear? Big Bird not only voted, but also waited in line!

Image credit: @sophers_/Instagram

Nate Silver was trending in many of the swing states. Who is he? The former baseball statistician turned political prognosticator got 49 out of 50 states right in 2008. This year he predicted Obama had a 91.8 percent chance of winning. Lots of Democrats were passing around the image below made by @tbogg using a meme generator this past Saturday. It has been re-blogged 846 times on Tumblr so far.

Image credit: @tbogg/Twitter

Of course, the celebrities you know and love made it out to the polls. Kisses from Mariah…

Credit: @MariahCarey/Twitter

And, uh, something from Joan Rivers…

Credit: @joanrivers / Twitter

According to the AP, Obama was asked by a radio show in New Hampshire if he would do a rendition of the Gangnam Style dance if he wins. Obama said, "I think I can do that move. But I'm not sure that the inauguration ball is the appropriate time to break that out." Naturally the Internet took to creating an animated GIF…

Credit: Ryan Broderick @ryanhatesthis

It's an old photo, but it made the rounds again. Worried baby was … worried!

Hal Yeager/The Birmingham News/AP Photo

There have been thousands and thousands of photos of lines and #stayinline was trending throughout the night on Twitter. At least the people in line in Sweetwater, Fla. got pizza!

Image credit: City of Sweetwater

And finally, the tweet heard across the nation:

Image credit: @BarackObama/Twitter

Big Bird is excited!

Image credit: GOPMeme / Facebook

Twitter Trends

From midnight through 2 p.m. ET today there were 6.4 million tweets about the election. According to Twitter, there was an average of 3,000 tweets per minute with people expressing that they "voted!" Twitter's Election 2012 portal is located here.

- As of 7:45 p.m. ET, Twitter was reporting that there were more than 11 million #Election2012 tweets already today.

- As of 8:30 p.m. ET, Twitter had hit a new peak: 65,000 tweets per minute bringing up the total count of tweets to 13 million.

- As of 9:26 p.m. ET, Twitter had hit a new peak of 66,019 tweets per minute when the Pennsylvania results were announced.

- As of 10:16 p.m. ET, Twitter had hit 20 million election-related tweets, making it the most tweeted-about event in U.S. political history. Read the full story here.

- #Election2012 has been trending, but #StayInLine has also been trending high.

- At 11:16 p.m. ET Barack Obama broke the news via a tweet: "Four More Years." By 11:25 p.m. it had 128,469 retweets.

ABC News has a pretty nifty map showing real-time results from the polls, but Facebook has a vote tally based on who has mentioned they have voted on the site. You can check it out at FacebookStories.com/vote.

Image credit: Facebook