(XINHUA SPECIAL REPORT: MEET AMERICAN VOTERS) Feature: Seeing country more polarized, American voters fear for future

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.

"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.

ANXIETY ABOUT FUTURE

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.

GAME OF MONEY, POWER AND INFLUENCE

To William Tucker, a dancer who also works part-time in a pizzeria on the outskirts of Allentown, Pennsylvania, 2016 marks the first time that he is eligible to vote. But he is so disappointed that he will not go out to cast the ballot.

"I don't think either candidate has our best interest in heart. Voting for anyone is not going to change anything," said the African-American man who has registered as a Democrat.

"Actually I am an independent. I don't believe in the two-party system. I believe the two-party system is apparently separating us unnecessarily," he said. He did not plan to vote for any third-party candidate either, "because I don't feel that's going to make a difference."

"The voting system is so corrupt. Something is definitely wrong with the system. The country is controlled by the wealthy. We don't have much a say in the system," he said.

Mathewson, the senior portfolio manager in Bethlehem, also blamed the system for the problems facing the country.

"It's because of the system. The good candidates, people who are eligible, qualified, people with integrity and character, cannot afford to run the race. They don't have billions of dollars behind them. It's all about money. It's 100 percent about money," she said.

"As long as you have people buying their way into the White House, I don't see it's making much a progress as a country," he said. "This is a game of money, power, and influence. That makes me sad." Enditem (Editing by Zhou Xiaozheng, Zheng Jie; Xinhua reporters Shang Yang and Zhang Zhihuan also contributed to the story)