Canadian politics are extremely different from American politics so even though other aspects of our culture are shared you have to pay much closer attention to

Canadian politics are extremely different from American politics so even though other aspects of our culture are shared you have to pay much closer attention to understand what's going on over the border. (This goes both ways, it took me years to understand how on earth your current PM could get elected.) One other issue is that both sides will focus on what's happening in individual states and act like the whole country is behaving that way. What's really happening is that people are taking mutually exclusive extreme positions and it's influencing the state laws. This is by design and allows people who disagree to live in harmony.