On September 15, a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump refocused attention on the risk of political violence in this year’s presidential election. Suspect Ryan Routh had waited for hours with an assault rifle by Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach when an agent spotted him in shrubbery and fired.

Routh fled, but was apprehended quickly.

Eleven days later, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, Alan Vandersloot, a 74-year-old local borough councilman, stood with a Vice President Kamala Harris sign among about a dozen of her supporters at a rally in York, a city of nearly 45,000 in a county that broadly backed Trump in 2020.

As the rally was ending, Vandersloot said, a man grabbed him from behind and slammed him to the pavement, opening a two-inch gash on his forehead. The attacker, Robert Trotta, punched Vandersloot repeatedly before fleeing, two witnesses said in interviews.

When another rallygoer, Dan Almoney, gave chase, Trotta called him “a n— supporter,” Almoney said. Almoney interpreted the slur as a reference to Harris and her backers, he said. Trotta, Vandersloot and Almoney are white.

Trotta, unable to post bail, has yet to make a plea on assault and harassment charges, court records show. His lawyer declined to comment. Trotta is a registered Republican, according to state records. His social media posts, from an account last active in 2020, supported Trump and criticised Democrats.

A York City Police Department spokesperson, Captain Daniel Lentz, said he didn’t believe Trotta’s attack was “politically motivated” because Trotta previously pleaded guilty to two cases of harassment in which he struck random people. The police report, however, did not include statements from Vandersloot and Almoney, who both said they believed the attack was political. Lentz said he didn’t know why the police didn’t record their accounts.

There’s no government data on political violence, although several universities and private research groups track it in various ways, typically using databases built on news accounts. Some include random hate crimes; others, including Reuters, do not. Most have not released comprehensive data since 2020.

The 300 cases identified by Reuters were culled from records on thousands of violent crimes since the 2021 Capitol attack. Most of that data was captured initially by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a global violence-tracking project run by a nonpartisan research group in Wisconsin. Reporters identified additional cases using news databases, court filings and police reports obtained through public records requests.

Some of the cases don’t break down along traditional partisan lines, including those linked to disputes over the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

That was the case last month when Caleb Gannon, a pro-Palestinian critic of US government support for Israel, began heckling a pro-Israel rally in Newton, Massachusetts. Cell phone video shows Gannon shouting, “You’re supporting genocide!” before running into the crowd and tackling Scott Hayes, a fervent backer of Israel.

Earlier this year, Hayes, an Iraq War veteran, posted a photo on social media of a handgun with a Star of David pendant and the message “Hey Jew Haters. Bring it.” As they wrestled on the ground, Hayes shot Gannon in the abdomen.

Hayes, 47, is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The county prosecutor has said an assault and battery charge also will be pursued against Gannon, 31, who remains hospitalised. Hayes’ lawyer said he will argue self-defence but declined further comment.

Other cases are directly linked to the election.

On September 26, a Michigan man was arrested for assaulting a US Postal Service worker who delivered a Harris campaign mailer to his house. The postal worker was in her truck when Russell Valleau, 61, approached on a bike, yelling that he “did not want that ‘Black bitch’ in his mailbox,” according to police records and a statement from the Oakland County prosecutor.

When the postal worker, who is Black, told Valleau to back away, he called her a “Black bitch” and lunged at her with a knife, according to her account to the Farmington Hills Police Department. She sprayed him with dog repellent, and he retreated. “I just had a man come to me with a knife and try to stab me,” she said moments later in a call to police, according to a recording obtained through a records request. “I sprayed him.”

Police reported finding Valleau lying in a nearby yard, apparently intoxicated and suffering the effects of chemical repellent. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and battery and ethnic intimidation. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

In another case this summer, four white men in a pick-up truck rolled up to a rural home in coastal North Carolina and asked three Black teens in the yard “if they liked Donald Trump,” according to a report from the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office. When the youths said, “No,” the report said, the men opened fired with a BB gun, hitting one youth in the leg and another in the buttocks. The shots also broke windows on the house, a shed and a car out front.

The truck drove off. Police are investigating the case as an assault with a deadly weapon and have no suspects. The children suffered minor injuries and declined medical treatment.

Christian Gilyard, the youths’ father, said political tensions have become more pronounced since the contested 2020 election, but he never expected problems in his own neighbourhood. “It’s shocking,” he said, “that something like this would happen here.”

• A Reuters report