In the American ideal, elections are moments of patriotism, a time for citizens to settle their differences at the ballot box, no matter how fiery the disagreements.

In the reality of 2024, ballot boxes are, in some places, literally burning.

So it goes in an election that has been darker than any in recent memory. The nation enters this Election Day on edge over possibilities that once seemed unimaginable in 21st-century America: political violence, assassination attempts and vows of retribution against opponents.

For many voters, the anxiety that pervaded the last election, a socially distanced race that happened amid the coronavirus outbreak, has morphed into a far grimmer feeling of foreboding.

In dozens of interviews over the final weekend of the campaign, Americans from across the political spectrum reported heading to the polls in battleground states with a sense that their nation was coming undone. While some expressed relief that the long election season was finally nearing an end, it was hard to escape the undercurrent of uneasiness about Election Day and what might follow afterward.

Those worries reflect the fears of a country that has undergone a tumultuous four years, transformed by a devastating pandemic that killed more than one million Americans, a shocking siege on the nation’s Capitol that upended the nation’s bedrock tradition of a peaceful transition of power, the fall of a nearly half-century-old federal right to abortion and a surge in prices unseen for decades. Across the country, cities have felt the strain of the migrant crisis at the southern border.

The presidential candidates themselves have framed the election as an existential battle for the nation’s character, its democracy and the safety of its residents. In their ads and at events, Democrats recount the graphic stories of women who almost died as a result of restrictive abortion bans. As they campaign, Republicans describe brutal crimes by foreign gang members in the country illegally, telling Americans they could be the next victims.