Former US President Donald Trump was injured in a shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Washington:
Americans fear their country is spiraling out of control after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and there are growing concerns that the Nov. 5 election could lead to more political violence, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that ended Tuesday.
The two-day poll showed Republican presidential candidate Trump with a narrow lead among registered voters — 43% to 41% — over Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden. The advantage was within the poll's 3 percentage point margin of error, suggesting that Trump's attempted assassination did not significantly change voter sentiment.
But 80% of voters — including equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans — said they agreed with the statement that “the country is out of control.” The poll, conducted online, surveyed 1,202 U.S. adults nationwide, including 992 registered voters.
Trump narrowly escaped death on Saturday when a would-be assassin's bullet grazed his ear as he spoke at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Blood trickled down his face and he raised his fist in defiance, muttering “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as he was led off the stage. One attendee at the rally was killed and two others were seriously wounded.
The shooting evoked memories of turbulent political periods such as the 1960s, when Democratic President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, followed by the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
Some 84% of voters said they were concerned that extremists would commit violent acts after the election, up from a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May, which found that 74% of voters had that fear.
Fears of political violence became more prominent in America after thousands of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn Trump’s election loss to Biden. Four people died the day of the attack, and a Capitol police officer who fought off the rioters died the next day.
While Americans said they feared violence, few tolerated it. Just 5% of respondents said it was acceptable for someone in their political party to commit violence to achieve a political goal, down from 12% in a June 2023 Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The attempt on Trump's life dominated the media and sparked debate among some of his conservative Christian supporters, who claimed he was protected by God.
In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 65 percent of registered Republicans said Trump was “favored by divine providence or God's will.” Eleven percent of Democrats agreed.
The United States stands out among wealthy nations for its embrace of religion, with evangelical Christians largely aligned with the Republican Party in recent decades. Some 77% of Americans surveyed in 2022 said they believed in God, compared with 56% of Canadians and 39% of British respondents, according to a poll by the Gallup International Association.
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