A teacher of history and politics in the Hanover School Division says it is quite something to see both the Republicans and Democrats in the United States coming out as divided parties after their leadership conventions. Those conventions are normally used to unite parties after the fight for the leadership. But Michael Zwaagstra says the divisions in both parties this time around are due to the nature of the people who won the leadership races.

Michael Zwaagstra"Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have very high negative numbers; they are very controversial in and of themselves. Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for many years. She has a lot of scandals to go with those many years, most recently the controversy with Benghazi, her own e-mail scandal with the way she handled confidential e-mails while she was Secretary of State. All those things are sticking to her and a lot of Democrats feel that she's also a candidate of the status quo and they want to see change. On the Republican side, Donald Trump, I think we all know, makes some very controversial statements. He has made some very negative comments about Latinos, he's made negative comments about Muslims and that causes a lot of division within the Republican Party. In addition, Donald Trump is not in favour of free trade and the Republicans, for the last number of years, have been strong supporters of free trade. That's what you expect a free enterprise, free market party to support. The fact that Donald Trump wants to rip up trade deals is certainly something that's very different among the Republicans."

Zwaagstra believes many American voters are likely going to vote for the person they consider the lesser of two evils; in other words they'll vote against a candidate instead of for the person they think would be the best President.

Zwaagstra says there is reason for Canadians to be concerned about the outcome of the Presidential election.

"I think we will see a significant impact. The one that stands out to me is that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, through their statements during this campaign, have indicated their opposition to free trade in various forms. One thing that we as Canadians should be very concerned about is that, considering that the United States is Canada's biggest trading partner, I think we're going to face this problem, regardless of who becomes President."