Canada’s Election Day is here.

It’s been a short, hectic campaign season, marked by startling reversals — most notably a massive decline in support for the current opposition Conservative Party — and ignited by the resignation of longtime Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The race has also been reshaped by the politics of the United States, namely the aggressively expansionist vision and chaotic economic policy of President Donald Trump.

Results should be in shortly after polls close at 10 pm ET. According to the polls, Trudeau’s Liberal Party is expected to come out on top, although it’s difficult to say now by how much.

To fully understand what led to this strange election, how the US shaped it, and what’s next for Canada, I turned to Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, our politics correspondent, who lives in Ontario. Here’s what he had to say (our conversation has been edited for clarity and length):

So Zack, could you give us a brief overview of the Canadian political scene?

There are a number of different parties that compete in national elections, but there are really only two that have a chance at holding the premiership.

One, there are the Liberals — who are the incumbent party, and as you might guess, are the central-left party — currently led by Mark Carney, who’s a central banker by career. Carney took over after the longtime prime minister, Justin Trudeau, resigned amidst significant unpopularity.

Two, there is the Conservative Party. Their name is self-explanatory, and they’re led by Pierre Poilievre, who is a career politician — he’s been in politics since he was in his early 20s. For a long time, Poilievre was leading the polls. He’s fairly right-wing by Canadian standards.

Monday’s race is primarily between the two of them.

There are also other parties that matter, chief of which is the New Democratic Party (NDP), the left-wing alternative to the Liberals. They are intermittently successful, but this year are doing very poorly. You also have two smaller parties, the Green Party and the People’s Party, which is an attempt to build a European-style, far-right party in Canada that so far, hasn’t been very successful.

There’s a fourth party which matters regionally, but can affect national parties: the Bloc Québécois, which represents Quebec, which is the French speaking part of Canada. It has very distinct regional interests around French language, French identity, and French culture. They usually do very well in national elections within the province of Quebec, but don’t really perform anywhere else.

I love the clear branding on all the parties there, that’s very helpful. What do our main duo, the Liberals and Conservatives, believe in?

If you’re in America trying to think through who the Liberals and Conservatives are, imagine a Republican Party prior to Trump, then shift that party a little bit to the left to accommodate for a more left-wing country — that’s the Conservatives. For the Liberals, imagine a party that’s not Bernie Sanders, but certainly on the left-wing side of where the Democratic Party is right now.

That’s not how I would normally explain them if I was talking to a Canadian, or the most accurate way to describe them; the US and Canada are different countries. But if you’re looking for a........

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