Election Day is here! After months of planning and preparation, we here at CNN.com are excited to provide you with your election news and information on this historic day. We will be providing you with a lot of information, and we know that you may have questions about how some of the election processes work, where to find certain information or why we do things in certain ways. Below we have put together some of the more common questions and answers we expect. Got more questions? Send them to us through comments on this blog and we’ll do our best to respond!

How deep is CNN.com’s Elections Result Coverage?
CNN.com’s Elections Results coverage includes extensive data on the presidential, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and Governor races. This information is available at national, state and county levels.

Need a starting point? All of the coverage is easily accessible from the CNN.com home page. You can also go to our Election Results area to start diving in to our comprehensive Election Results coverage.

CNN.com also covers several key ballot measures, exit poll results and special coverage on key battleground states. In addition, every state has its own full results page so you can see all of the races, key ballot measures and latest projections in your state.

When do results start coming in?
Election results start coming in at approximately 6 p.m. ET as CNN begins receiving vote counts from the state precincts with the earliest poll closing times. Statewide poll closings start at 7 p.m. ET, with polls remaining open in some states until 1 a.m. ET. If there are multiple poll closing times in a state, CNN will not project a winner and only release select exit poll information for that state until the last poll closing time, even though vote counts may start appearing sooner. View the full list of last poll closing times. How do I read Exit Polls?

How does CNN make its projections?
CNN receives data from two key sources – AP and Edison Media Research – and uses a sample of precinct data from these sources. In races where results do not appear to be close, projections are made on exit poll data alone. In races that are close, CNN will wait for votes to be counted and reported. Read more about this process

How can I make my own projections?
You can calculate the likelihood of particular voting scenarios using CNN.com’s Electoral Map Calculator. This calculator allows you to create different scenarios and project the winner. On Election Night, the calculator will lock down CNN projections on a state-by-state basis while allowing you to choose winners for the remaining states and predict an outcome. Want information on what the latest polls are saying to help you make your pick? See the Election Tracker: Candidate Polls.

How can I keep track of races that I care about in one place?
You can track up to 35 races using the Your Races feature. Your Races allows you to select by race, state or location. You can start by entering your ZIP code, or you can customize Your Races by including different races and states you are interested in. Want to keep track of the battleground states? Simply select “battleground states” from the race menu, add them to Your Races and keep track of them throughout the night. Once you have made your selections, you will be asked to select your top three races, which will “follow” you in a module throughout the Election Results pages as you navigate the site.

Where can I find all the latest analysis from the CNN Political Unit?
The Best Political Team will offer reporting, analysis and live blogging on the Political Ticker, where you will also find the latest information on voter problems, key congressional races, voter turnout and the latest information on the campaign trail.

I am unsure how electoral votes work or what “balance of power” really means. Is there a place that explains these terms at a basic level?
The Electoral College process along with information on where and how to vote can be found in our Elections 101 section. In addition, a comprehensive glossary of elections terms takes the mystery out of some of our commonly used terms throughout the election site.

How can I find information about where candidates stand on a particular issue?
Simply go to our Issues section within the Election Center for information on how the presidential and vice presidential candidates would tackle the big issues currently facing our nation.

How can I find out more about the campaigns and how their strategies – campaign visits, ad spending, etc. - affected the Election?
Our comprehensive Election Tracker includes information on candidate polling, fundraising, ad spending, candidate visits and past results. You can also try the Power Play feature that lets you “mash up,” or compare, two categories to see the correlations.

Does CNN.com cover third party candidates?
CNN.com covers third party candidates throughout our results pages as they affect specific state races. At the national level, users will be able to track every vote for president on one page, at cnn.com/thirdparties.

Where can I share my views on this election?
CNN.com has several places where you can discuss the issues that matter to you. The Forum offers lively debate and discussion and allows you to build a badge that reflect your political beliefs, compare your views to others and — for Facebook users — connect and share with your friends. iReport.com is an entirely user-generated online destination that provides a place for you share the experiences you have had during this election. Here you can upload photos and videos to help tell your story, and you may even find that your coverage gets included on CNN! Finally, CNN.com selects several stories a day where users can “sound off” by submitting comments about a particular article or video.

Can I view election results on my mobile device?
CNN offers election results on your phone so you can get the latest numbers in the presidential, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and Governor races and also find races by your ZIP code. Just type cnn.com into your phone’s browser to get started.

What can I expect to see on CNN.com LIVE?
Expect to see all the excitement of the day and night on our live, multi-stream video news service. CNN.com Live will stream live reports from polling stations across the country, along with the analysis from guests, contributors and members of the Best Political Team on Television. As polls close, the CNN.com LIVE team will bring you real-time election results and analysis. We’ll also be streaming all the major acceptance and concession speeches. Catch highlights on VOD later if you missed anything.

At CNN.com, we’re always working to enhance and improve the video experience for YOU, our consumers. We are very happy to announce our latest move in that effort with the introduction of the CNN.com embeddable video player, a stand-alone video player that can be virally distributed by using a code snippet to embed on almost any site or blog that you choose. For the time being, the player is limited to a single clip and available in the player size, 384×216. We’ve also added a share feature to allow you to share videos on your favorite social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

See something you like and want to share it with others? Just click on the button on the video player that says “embed this video”. Then, you will see a message allowing you to copy the embed code to place on your site. And, just like that, you’ve embedded CNN.com video! Or click on the share button and select a site from the list on which you’d like to share a video link .We hope you enjoy these latest features – let us know what you think!

We’ve just launched BackStory, our latest new feature on CNN.com, to give you a quick way to catch up on how a story has developed over time.

Now, when we want to give history, context and background to a developing story, we go back through our archives to find “milestone” events and then link those together in an interactive window.

Our BackStory on the investigation into the anthrax attacks takes us back to that first death from anthrax exposure and the spread of the scare to the U.S. Senate offices in those uneasy weeks after the 9/11 attacks. We highlight how the FBI issued a profile of their suspect and then honed in on a scientist — the wrong one — before finally saying this month that they believe they’ve solved the case.

In this and all other BackStories, readers can click through events to get a quick recap of how the story has evolved and how it has been covered on CNN. And we link to full stories of the time to give more details of what we knew then as well as to pages on key players.

So watch out for more BackStories and let us know if they’re giving you the understanding of a story you want.

When we relaunched CNN.com a few months ago, we promised to keep evolving, adding new features and functionality based on what you told us you wanted.

So, we are pleased to let you know that last week we added a number of new elements, including:

• A direct link to our most popular stories right on the home page. And a new, enhanced Most Popular page.
• A quick way to browse all the stories that CNN.com has published in the past 24 hours.
• A Tools and Widgets page showing all the new gadgets, widgets and alerters that you can get to stay on top of the news.
• A simple way to save and share stories by adding them to your pages on Digg, Facebook, del.icio.us, reddit and StumbleUpon.
  

Please let us know how you like the new features and what else you would like us to add. Then, stay tuned for more!