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Seeing country more polarized, American voters fear for future

Xinhua | Updated: 2016-11-03 09:27

Though the voters embrace different candidates, and though they are of different races, ages, genders and backgrounds, they spoke almost in unison that they were worried about the direction of the country and the economy.

In Tallmadge, a suburb of Akron, Ohio, Chris Houston, a retired white male who identified himself as a life-long Democrat but would vote for Trump this year, said the economy was his biggest concern, citing the country's huge national debt and outdated infrastructure.

Olivia Mansfield, a Walmart cashier, and her husband Steve Dotson, a warehouse worker, rented a house and moved three months ago to a middle-class community in the city of Springfield, the state of Ohio.

A registered Democrat who is still on the fence but leaning toward Clinton, Olivia, in her 20s, said it was hard to make a living with four kids. She hoped the government could offer more help and that her kids could get better education.

But Jack Baker, a 72-year-old white male who lives a few blocks away in the same community, said he was dissatisfied with "government control in everything and that started with (incumbent President) Barack Obama."

"Food stamps are not helping the poor, and it is only pacifying," said Baker who worked in a factory making transmission for helicopters before his retirement. "Politics has taken what should be non-racial to racial."

The United States is witnessing manufacturing jobs loss, wages stagnation, a "bad drug problem" and rampant shootings, said Baker who called himself a conservative.

For those anxious about an uncertain future, the most unconventional general election is a disappointment, offering no clear policy positions of the next president. Political arguments degraded into name-calling over each other's character and past, while scandals after scandals surrounding the two major-party candidates added to their anxiety and anger.

In the final stretch of the race to clinch the 270 electoral votes to the White House, Trump is entangled in the disclosure of a 2005 lewd video in which the once TV celebrity bragged in obscene language about forcing himself on women sexually. Though he insisted it was just "locker room talk," 11 women have since come forward to publicly accuse him of sexual misconduct.

Clinton is racking her brains to deal with the fallout of WikiLeaks' nearly daily dump of hacked emails showing machination of her campaign. Moreover, the newest FBI investigation into her reckless handling of confidential emails, announced 11 days before the election, once again rocked the unbelievable race.

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