Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast. I'm Gaelin Drouk. It's a big election week

for Western democracies, Canada held a national election on Monday, and Germany is preparing

to vote on Sunday. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a snap election in

August and an apparent attempt to expand his minority government into a majority. The bid

failed, and when all the votes are tiled, his Liberal Party will end up with just about the same

number of seats in Parliament that it began with. The Liberal Party will, however, remain the

largest party in Parliament, and Trudeau will keep his position as Prime Minister. In Germany,

Angela Merkel is stepping aside after 16 years as Chancellor. She's been a symbol of stability

during the European debt and refugee crises, and has weathered a rise in populism and Britain's

exit from the European Union. Her tenure has lasted the span of four American presidents,

and now German voters will decide what the country's politics look like without her out the help.

The polls are close, and the three biggest parties have all taken a turn in the lead.

So today, we're going to take a rare opportunity to turn our focus abroad and see how other

democracies, electoral systems work, and what cleavages their politics are facing. So we will

kick things off with that Canadian election and move on to Germany. In the second half of the show,

he would meet to discuss Canada is 530 politics reporter, Kaylee Rogers. Kaylee is from Ontario,

and has covered a number of Canadian elections, including at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hello, Kaylee. Hi, how's it going? Going well. Glad that you're able to join us to talk about

your home country for a little while. Yeah, we'll see how bad my accent gets as the show goes on.

I mean, how good your accent gets. I'm eager to hear it. All you hear with us is Eric Grenier.

He runs the poll track or for the CBC and writes the newsletter, The RIT. Welcome, Eric. Hello.

So first off, let's keep it broad to start. What were your key takeaways from the results of

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