Former US President Donald Trump was injured in a shooting during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Washington:
Americans fear their country is spiraling out of control after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, with growing concerns that the Nov. 5 election could lead to more political violence, a Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Tuesday.
The two-day poll showed Republican presidential candidate Trump opening a marginal lead among registered voters – 43% to 41% – over Democratic US President Joe Biden, an advantage that was within the poll’s 3 percentage point margin of error, which indicating that the attempt on Trump’s life had not produced a major shift in voter sentiment.
But 80% of voters — including a similar share of Democrats and Republicans — said they agreed with the statement that “the country is spiraling out of control.” The survey, conducted online, surveyed 1,202 U.S. adults nationwide, including 992 registered voters.
Trump narrowly avoided death on Saturday when a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear as he spoke at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Blood poured down his face and he raised his fist in defiance, shouting the words ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ pronounced. as he was rushed off stage. One participant in the meeting was killed and two others were seriously injured.
The shooting brought back 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.
About 84% of voters in the poll said they were concerned that extremists would commit acts of violence after the election, an increase from the results of a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May that found 74% of voters harbored this fear.
Fears of political violence became more prominent in America after thousands of Trump supporters attacked the US 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 the rioters died the next day.
While Americans said they feared violence, few tolerated it. Only 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 has dominated headlines and fueled debate among some of his conservative Christian supporters that he was protected by God.
In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 65% of registered Republicans said Trump was “favored by divine providence or God’s will.” Eleven percent of Democrats agreed.
The United States stands out from wealthy countries in its embrace of religion, with evangelical Christians largely aligned with the Republican Party in recent decades. About 77% of Americans surveyed in 2022 said they believed in God, compared with 56% of Canadians and 39% of British respondents, according to a Gallup International Association poll.
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