NEW YORK — US stocks rose on Tuesday as voters went to the polls on the final day presidential election and as more data piled up showing that the economy remains stable.

S&The P 500 rose 1.2% to approach its record last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 427 points, or 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.4%.

The market got a boost from a report showing that growth accelerated last month for retailers, transportation companies and other companies in the US service sector. That was despite economists’ expectations of a slowdown, and Institute of Supply Management said it was the strongest growth in more than two years.

The report gave more hope that the US economy will remain firm and avoid a long-feared recession after worst inflation in generations.

Enthusiasm over the artificial intelligence boom also helped lift the stock market, as it has for much of the past year. Software company Palantir Technologies jumped 23.5% after delivering bigger-than-expected profit and revenue for the latest quarter. It’s an industry known for thinking and talking big, and CEO Alexander Karp said: “We absolutely pulled away this quarter, driven by relentless AI demand that won’t slow down.”

That helped offset a 5.2% decline for NXP Semiconductors. The Dutch company fell to one of the biggest losses in S&The P 500 after warning that weakness it saw in industrials and other markets in the last quarter is spreading to Europe and the Americas.

All in all, S&The P 500 rose 70.07 points to 5,782.76. The Dow gained 427.28 to 42,221.88 and the Nasdaq composite added 259.19 to 18,439.17.

The market’s most important event on Tuesday was the election, although the outcome may not be known for days or weeks as officials count all the votes. Such uncertainty could roil markets, along with an upcoming meeting of the Federal Reserve on the interest rates later in the week. The widespread expectation is that it will cut its main interest rate for the second time in a row.

Despite all the uncertainty ahead of the final day of voting, many professional investors suggest staying focused on the long term. The broad US stock market has historically tended to rise regardless of which party wins The White House, although each party’s policies can help and hurt different industries’ profits.

Since 1945, S&The P 500 has risen in 73% of the years when a Democrat was president and 70% of the years when a Republican was the nation’s chief executive, according to Sam Stovall, investment strategist at CFRA.

The U.S. stock market has risen more when Democrats have been president, in part because a loss during George W. Bush’s term hurt the Republican average. Bush took over as the dot-com bubble deflated and left office as the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession devastated markets.

Besides who will become president, other questions hanging over the market include whether the White House will work with a unified Congress or one divided by political parties, as well as whether the results will be contested.

The general hope among investors is often for shared control of the US government because it is more likely to maintain the status quo and avoid major changes that could drive the nation’s debt much, much higher.

When it comes to a contested election, Wall Street has some precedent to look back on. In 2000, S&The P 500 fell 5% in about five weeks after Election Day before Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush. However, it also happened during the almost halving of S&P 500 from March 2000 to October 2002 when the dot-com bubble deflated.

Four years ago, S&The P 500 rose the day after the polls closed, although a winner was not yet clear. And it continued to go higher after earlier President Donald Trump refused to concede and challenged the results, creating much uncertainty. Much of that rally was due to excitement over the potential for a vaccine against COVID-19, which had just shut down the global economy.

S&The P 500 ended up 69.6% from Election Day 2020 through Monday, following President Joe Biden’s win. It set a record as the US economy bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic and managed to avoid a recession despite a jump in inflation.

In the four years before that, S&The P 500 rose 57.5% from Election Day 2016 to Election Day 2020, due in part to tax rate cuts signed by Trump.

Investors have already made moves in anticipation of a win by either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. But Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, suggests not getting caught up in such pre-election moves, or even those immediately after the polls close, “as we think will face an inevitable dampening, if not outright reversals, either before or after inauguration day.”

In the bond market, yields on the 10-year Treasury note rose initially after Tuesday morning’s strong report on US services companies, but pared gains later in the day. It fell to 4.28% from 4.29% late Monday.

On the stock exchanges abroad, indices were mixed in Europe and Asia. Movements were mostly modest outside jumps of 2.3% in Shanghai and 2.1% in Hong Kong.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Alex Veiga and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.