Feature: Seeing country more polarized, American voters fear for future
BETHLEHEM, the United States, Nov. 3 (NsNewsWire) — At 52, Jewel Mathewson is optimistic about her life. She found a “good job” and moved from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a month ago to work as a senior portfolio manager with a big financial company.
Yet, Mathewson, who is white with two children and five grandchildren, is not that upbeat about the future of the country, fearing for the animosity in the wake of the Nov. 8 presidential election, and the money in politics, reports Xinhua.
“The division of this society is terrible,” she told Xinhua in downtown Bethlehem less than two weeks before the election. “I’ve been through a lot of elections. I’ve voted since I was 18 years old. Never have I seen the country so polarized.”
An independent, Mathewson called it “a heartbreaking decision” to choose from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, both of whom she is “sorrowfully disappointed with.” “I don’t see how they will bring changes to this country.”
“I think the American people are not happy with either person for president. You’re gonna have a large demographic of people who’re gonna be very disappointed and angry, regardless who is going to win,” she said.
“I think I speak for the majority of the American population,” whether they’re in the mid-west or the west, or northeast, she said.
“Usually the American people will settle for whatever the choice is, but I don’t see people are settling for this election,” she said. “There’s gonna be a lot of animosity towards whoever wins that the other side didn’t want to win.”
“What’s gonna take for us to be united again, a tragedy, disaster, or bankruptcy? Something terrible, for sure. That’s unfortunate. We don’t have to go down that road. But history repeats itself, always.”
POLARIZING CANDIDATES
This year’s presidential election has, indeed, exposed and underscored the deep polarization haunting the American society in recent decades.
There seems to be an endless list that Americans find themselves on the opposite sides of the spectrum — abortion, gun control, immigration, healthcare, climate change, the role of government, homosexuality, and even who can use which bathroom.
A political polarization update released by Pew Research Center in April found that Republicans and Democrats were more divided along ideological lines than at any point in the previous two decades.
Today, an overwhelming share of Republicans (93 percent) is more conservative than the median Democrat, while a nearly identical share of Democrats (94 percent) is more liberal than the median Republican, the research showed.
Two decades ago, a much smaller majority of Republicans (64 percent) were to the right of the median Democrat, while 70 percent of Democrats were to the left of the median Republican, it revealed. With liberals and conservatives combining significantly surpassing moderates, the electorate is moving further apart.
The 2016 race to the White House pits two of the most polarizing figures in public life today — one a former first lady, senator and secretary of state; the other a New York businessman tycoon who has never been elected to public office before.
A byproduct of the political polarization, Clinton and Trump, both more strongly disliked than any nominee in the past presidential cycles, have driven an even larger wedge into the divided electorate.
A considerable portion of voters in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania Xinhua reporters toured lately have made it clear that their endorsement of Trump is rejection of Clinton, and vice versa.