Awhile back, I read a fantastic book about the 1800 election - "A Magnificent Catastrophe". It went through the ups and downs of that election, and one thing that was very different from every election in my lifetime was how it unfolded over the course of a couple of months. Back then, different states voted at different times - some via actual elections, some legislatively - but the thing that really stood out to me was how distributed across time the election was. Voting in some states was heavily influenced by how the vote had gone in other states.

Until this election, that wasn't really true in the modern era. Early voting has become widespread enough that we are starting to see "exit polling" of people who voted early. I have no idea how accurate any of that is, but - as with the 1800 election - I'm sure the reporting of early results will influence later voting. It's kind of a weird thing, watching a modern election and being able to relate it to something that happened over 200 years ago - and on strictly mechanical lines, not ideological ones.