According to data from the University of Florida, more than 80 million people voted early in the 2024 election. That's likely to be about half of the final number of voters.

Pre-Election Day voting has steadily grown in popularity over the last couple decades. Even before the pandemic, around 40% of voters in the 2016 election cast their ballot before Election Day. In 2020, of course, the number of people voting by mail surged, and almost 70% of people voted before Election Day — but this number returned to a more normal 50% in 2022.

What can we learn from these early votes? Not much. Even though early votes, like all ballots, aren't reported until polls are closed, some people try to read into the early voting numbers by looking at the party registration of the people who have turned out so far. But there are a few problems with that: First, people don't necessarily vote for the same party they're registered with. Second, we have no insights into who independents are voting for.

Third, and most importantly, early voters are an incomplete picture of the electorate. Even if early voters are disproportionately Democratic or Republican, we don't know if that's because Democrats or Republicans are unusually fired up to vote or just because they're shifting their voting patterns and deciding to vote early instead of on Election Day. Basically, any lead that one party amasses over the early-voting period can be totally wiped out with a strong Election Day turnout from the other.

Trump has made numerous claims that the country had a stronger economy during his presidency than under the Biden-Harris administration, despite the U.S. economy performing well under both Trump and Biden by most metrics. According to YouGov, which has tracked issue priorities among registered voters over time, the share of registered voters who cite the economy and inflation as their most important issue has increased by 16% since 2021. One group that ranks inflation as their top issue at a higher rate in 2024 is those with just a high school degree, at 36%, compared to 31% of all registered voters. As others have written, that's a group that's been trending toward Trump.

Another important issue for voters is abortion, which will be appearing on ballots across 10 states, including two key swing states: Arizona and Nevada. Abortion increased in importance by 4% since 2021, which can likely be attributed to the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that left the legality of abortion to the states. While some think abortion will play a big role in boosting Democrats in the 2024 election, as it seemed to in 2022, that's no sure bet. In terms of gender, abortion is significantly less important amongst men (4%) versus women (11%), which could contribute to the gender gap Meredith mentioned earlier — Harris has made her pro-choice stance a big part of her campaign.

Finally, immigration has shot up in importance this year, as Americans continue to be sharply divided on both the impacts of and policy approaches to the topic. Immigration consistently ranked as the most important issue for under 10% of registered voters throughout Biden's presidency, until 2024, when it jumped to around 15%, in the same YouGov data. Immigration is also on the ballot tonight — in Arizona, voters will decide whether to make crossing the border a state crime, among other provisions.

Over the last six years, a wave of upstart progressives slowly chipped away at the old guard of the Democratic Party, toppling establishment-aligned incumbents and pushing the party as a whole further to the left. These skirmishes have been one of the defining stories of Democratic primaries since 2018. But newly energized challenges from pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee transformed much of the intraparty divide this year, forcing major progressive organizations to rethink their approach to primary season.

Each cycle since 2018, 538 has tracked congressional and gubernatorial candidates backed by progressive groups and leaders. This year marked a dramatic change in the progressive movement's strategy, as the threat of outside spending against progressive incumbents was so strong that it sucked progressive organizations' resources away from backing challengers to incumbents or in open races.

Even more so than in 2022, progressives faced well-funded opposition, particularly from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel — which also spent huge sums to help defeat incumbent "Squad" members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, the only two incumbent Democrats in Congress who lost in the 2024 primary cycle. As a result, many of these groups barely endorsed at all in open primaries.

But overall, more than half of the progressive candidates in open races that we tracked this cycle still won their primaries, similar to 2022. Most of their victories came in uncontested or less competitive races. While these races may not have generated as much attention as the blockbuster Squad battles, each one is worth the same prize: a seat in Congress.

Notably, none of those progressive wins came at the expense of candidates backed by the party establishment. Open-seat clashes between progressives and DCCC-backed picks caused lots of drama in 2018 and 2020, but were effectively nonexistent in 2024. The two wings of the party even endorsed the same candidate in three swing districts currently held by Republicans (New Jersey's 7th, New York's 17th and New York's 19th Districts), signaling a unified front when it comes to targeting key pickup opportunities.

Tonight, we'll be watching to see if the progressive candidates who did make it through their primaries can also win in a general election, particularly those that have the backing of the party establishment, too.

Since Obama won the state in 2008, North Carolina has been a perennial tease to Democrats. They have repeatedly come within a few percentage points of carrying it again but have yet to get over the hump. Even in 2020, when now-President Joe Biden's decisive popular-vote win carried him to victory in most other swing states, North Carolina still voted for Trump by 1 percentage point.

But the state is slowly trending in the right direction for Democrats. In the 2000 election, it was 13 points redder than the nation as a whole; in 2008, it was only 7 points redder. And in 2020, it was just 6 points redder. If that trend continues, it could just be a matter of time until Democrats carry the state once again.

That time could be now. In 538's final polling average of North Carolina, Trump led Harris by just 0.9 points — well within the margin of error.

North Carolina has become a competitive state thanks to two main demographic factors. First, it has a lot of Black voters: Its citizen voting-age population is 21% Black, while the nation as a whole is just 12% Black. Second, its suburbs are growing fast and could be getting bluer. According to the 2020 exit polls, only 39% of suburban voters in North Carolina opted for Biden — significantly lower than the 50% who did so nationally. But according to an average of polls in September, suburban voters in North Carolina were supporting Harris at about the same rate (51%) as they were nationally (50%).

But Republicans still have one trump card in the Tar Heel State: its significant rural population. According to 2020 exit polls, 27% of North Carolina voters lived in rural areas, higher than in all six of the other main swing states. And rural areas in North Carolina have gotten significantly redder since Obama's win in 2008.