RE: Educate a foreigner on the US Election.
I was reading an article the other day about how Clinton and Trump are polling at record highs in terms of being the most unfavorable candidates in the last 10 election cycles.
Do you think this may open up an opportunity for a independent to have a strong showing in November?
Whether a third party has a strong showing or not (relative to normal US presidential standards), it doesn't mean that they have any realistic chance of getting elected. Not as long as we still have a FPTP (first-past-the-post) voting system. The best they can do is pull a Ralph Nader and act as a spoiler by pulling away more votes from one of the two major parties thus handing the election over to the other party.
If your candidate wins, what change do you hope they will bring that led you to vote for them? or was the vote simply to block the other candidate from potentially winning?
Unfortunately, the latter. Lesser of two evils...
Nader was just a potential spoiler, but Perot got 20% of the vote which is enough that someone doing only modestly better could win in a three way race.
A strong, credible candidate (which Nader wasn't) who has sufficient backing and resources (which Nader didn't), and doesn't screw up (as Perot did) absolutely could win. I don't see it happening this time around. For one thing, it is very late in the process to organize, gain recognition and support, and get ballot access. When Perot ran, he announced it in February. No one is doing that this year, and several of the possible candidates have ruled it out.