Donald Trump faced harsh criticism for violent remarks targeting a high-profile Republican supporter of Kamala Harris on Friday as the candidates held rallies in critical Rust Belt battleground states four days before the climax of a volatile US presidential campaign. Meanwhile, the growing polarisation in politics and media give rise to fears for violence in the run-up to the elections and beyond.Last weekend before US elections sees race heading for a nail-biting finale
"This guy is going to win," screams the man. He is wearing a black baseball cap with the inscription: "Trump 2024 - Make America Great Again." Loud rock music blasts from a loudspeaker in his backpack. He is carrying a Trump-lookalike puppet, wearing a read cap and a shirt with "45" and "47" pointing at Trump being the 45th US President, and, so he hopes, the 47th as well.
But it won't be without a fight, says the Trump-fan, who does not give his name. He stands out in the cheerful Halloween crowd of witches, pirates, Darth Vaders and zombies that populate the streets of central Philadelphia.
"They're gonna play with us. There's gonna be a cyber attack. The internet may go down. It's bad."
But the passers-by in this predominantly Democrat-voting stronghold hardly pay attention to him.
Most of them probably don't care. Pennsylvania was one of the US states where early voting was encouraged.
Swing states
According to CBS news, as many as 65 million Americans had voted before 31 October – five days ahead of Election Day.
An array of opinion polls show Trump and Harris running neck and neck, with the outcome hinging on who manages to win across the seven "swing states".
"People become obsessed with these polls,” warns J. Wesley Leckrone, a political scientist with Widener University located south of Philadelphia. “It is almost like a sporting event,” he told RFI. “We treat elections like sporting events nowadays.”
But he added that leading news organisations have “polling trackers” which give a summary of sometimes dozens of surveys by different opinion polling stations. “It gives an idea what the general trend is within a state.”
In Pennsylvania, one of the seven "swing states," where any prediction about a winner is too close to call, the combined polling surveys indicate that Trump surpassed Harris in the last couple of days and leads now with 47.9 percent against Harris with 47.7 percent.
“We’ve seen this over the last month,” says Leckrone, who calls Pennsylvania probably the most important "swing state".
“It is pretty much a dead heat,” he says. The red and blue lines on the polling charts represent the massive divide in US society.
The increasing polarisation in US politics worries political scientists. “We have a 'duopoly,'” says Leckrone.
Different from European countries where elections can result in coalition governments with sometimes up to four different parties, the two major US parties have set the rules of the game, leaving no place to third players, who sometimes try, but always fail, to gain a solid foothold in the political arena.
According to Daniel Hopkins, chair of the political science department of the University of Pennsylvania, the two parties have dominated the landscape since 1870.
“Those two parties are moving apart from each other to try and satisfy their core base voters especially today when Republicans and Democrats really disagree on a whole lot of issues,” he explains.
Traditionally, the most contentious issue, he says, was the racial divide and how to deal with it.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, the south went through an arduous process of desegregation. And while, on paper, equal rights were granted to everybody, significant divisions remained.
"Today issues on race are just part of a growing gap of opposing opinions about same-sex marriage, firearms and immigration."
Divisive media
Meanwhile, voters who already decided their camp seem to be stuck in their own universe.
Democrats watch MSNBC and CNN and read the New York Times, while Republicans stick to Fox News, read the New York Post and listen to Talk Radio and right-wing influencer Tucker Carlson.
“The media reflect such a divided society,” says Leckrone. "Politics in many ways has become a form of entertainment.
"So I pick the news channels that I watch on the basis of what my ideology is. People want to hear things that confirm their own, personal bias, they are watching the news to confirm the things that they already have beliefs about,” he adds.
On Friday, both Trump and Harris campaigned in Milwaukee, the most populous city of another "swing state", Wisconsin.
Trump held a rally at the same venue where he celebrated the Republican Party nomination over the summer, delivering a triumphant acceptance speech just days after the 78-year-old had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
And as the battle reaches its final days, Trump has stepped up his provocative attacks on Harris in a bid to draw more voters to the ballot boxes.
On Thursday, at an event with Tucker Carlson – fired by Fox News in ..... for his extreme opinions, Trump called Harris, a "sleaze bag" and Biden a "stupid bastard," while claiming, that polls are already being rigged in the biggest swing state Pennsylvania.
He reserved his harshest attacks for Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice-President under Republican President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney. She is one of the rare Republicans who is openly critical of Trump.
“She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face," Trump said.
Cheney responded. "This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death."
"Election-related violence"
While rhetoric is reaching a boiling point, Michael Wahid Hanna, the US program director for the Brussels-based NGO International Crisis Group said: “Warnings that Trump could again foment election-related violence are not idle speculation.
"It remains possible that Trump will encourage supporters to sow chaos around vote counting and certification processes, thus attempting to call the results into question and create a pretext for extraordinary procedures to resolve a disputed election in his favour."
In anticipation of potential unrest over the upcoming elections, some businesses and offices in downtown Washington have boarded up windows.
The capital witnessed violence four years ago when then-president Trump whipped up a crowd of supporters who stormed Congress in an attempt to halt certification of Biden's victory.
According to the New York Times, five people died during the 6 January 2022 Capitol Hill siege, an officer was beaten, a rioter was shot, and three others died of heart failure.
Around the streets of economically depressed North Philadelphia, such savagery has become routine fare, says Jessica Beard, a gun trauma surgeon at Temple University Hospital which takes in the largest number of shot wound cases in Pennsylvania.
"We're not on extra alert for the next few days," she says. “Violence and shootings are common around our hospital. It's sad to say, but because of gun violence, American trauma centres are always prepared for mass casualty events."
