Half of swing-state voters say they’re worried about violence surrounding the US presidential election, suggesting misgivings about how an acrimonious race and its results will be received by a highly polarized electorate, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.
Roughly equal shares of Democrats and Republicans hold that fear, and it is even more common among independents, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found. That result makes for a backdrop of apprehension as President Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump gear up to spar in a debate in June and put on shows of pageantry before thousands of people at their nominating conventions this summer.
With those events, the candidates will try to improve their standing in what the monthly tracking poll has consistently shown is a close contest. In May, Trump was ahead of Biden by 4 percentage points across seven key swing states.
The unease around the election was not limited to concerns about violence. Six in 10 swing-state voters worried about misinformation, while 46% expressed similar concerns about foreign interference. Smaller numbers of voters said they had little or no confidence that the election would be fair, legitimate and free from fraud, but the share that held those concerns has grown since March.
US voters have seen activism translate into unrest, including with a wave of protests during the 2020 campaign cycle after the police killing of George Floyd, and the more recent demonstrations on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.
Separately, anger about Biden’s victory four years ago culminated in a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop Congress from certifying the election.
Underlying voters’ concerns is a deep partisanship that has colored how Democrats and Republicans view everything from the trajectory of the economy to the importance of issues like immigration and abortion. Nine in 10 Republican swing-state voters say the national economy was better off under Trump, but only 13% of Democratic voters hold that view.