After months of enduring a barrage of punditry, polls and ad pitches, voters are finally getting their say.

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

A bruising campaign exposed deep ideological divisions between the two parties and a yawning gender gap between Harris and Trump, with women supporting Harris by a margin of 16 percentage points and men supporting Trump by 18 percentage points, according to the latest NBC News poll.

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

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

On Tuesday, Trump plans to vote in person in his home state of Florida, together with his wife Melania. He will then host members and top donors for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend the evening. Once there is an idea of ​​the results, Trump will head to the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Meanwhile, Harris, who concluded Monday evening with a final gathering at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the steps made famous in the “Rocky” films, is back in Washington. She voted early by mail in California. On Tuesday evening, after voting closes, she will return to her alma mater, Howard University in Washington.

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

Harris, who could become the first woman president, campaigned on restoring abortion rights and protecting democracy while pledging to support a “care economy” that would help new homeowners, small businesses and the elderly.

Trump often used dark — and sometimes violent — rhetoric, promising to reset the economy and deport millions of immigrants.

Both campaigns predicted confidence on Monday.

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

Trump made similar statements at a rally in North Carolina.

“Hopefully everything will be fine; we are leading. All we have to do is close it, we have to close it,” he said. “I actually hate that expression, but it’s ours to lose. Does that make sense to you? It’s ours to lose. If we get everyone to vote, there’s nothing they can do. And if we don’t do that, and if we don’t do that, they have to go after everyone who has ever signed anything in that terribly dangerous party that is going to destroy our country, and that is already destroying our country.”

The final day of voting caps a wild and sometimes shocking 15 weeks after President Joe Biden abandoned his quest for the Democratic nomination and threw his support behind Harris. Meanwhile, Trump has suffered two assassination attempts, including one in which he was grazed by a bullet.

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

Forecasters have been predicting a deadlocked contest for weeks that is within the margins of error of the polls. The cash-rich Harris campaign has deployed a massive ground game in battleground states, aiming to bring its voters to the polls. Republicans have raised concerns about their own ground operation after Trump outsourced recruitment efforts to third parties, over which multiple reports have documented unrest.

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

“I would say in Georgia we like what we see. We see that we are on course to win a very exciting race here. And as we watched day by day as we got closer to the deadline, we saw that especially in Georgia, early voting numbers were getting younger and more diverse every day,” said O’Malley Dillon. said. “We saw African American voters take up a larger share of the overall vote share, and we’re seeing pretty high numbers overall from our turnout overall.”

Trump’s campaign has boasted of robust early voting turnout among Republicans in states including Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, a carryover from 2020 after the party made a concerted effort to gain points at the front.

“President Donald J. Trump enters Election Day stronger than in previous elections and if patriots across the country keep the momentum and come out on Election Day as expected, we will swear in President Trump in January,” said 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 several days, indicating that a delay in vote counting is expected and would not be a sign of voter fraud. Trump, who has still not conceded his 2020 loss to Biden, has begun laying the groundwork to challenge the election results if he loses again.

Polls will begin closing completely in states, including the battleground state of Georgia, at 7 PM ET.