Is political polarization worse than it's been in the past?

Is Political Polarization Worse Than It's Been in the Past?

The answer is nuanced: yes, by most measures — but with important caveats depending on how you define and measure it, and over what time horizon.

The case that it IS worse (at least in modern history)

Congress is more divided than in decades. On average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. This isn't just a feeling — the ideological overlap between parties has vanished entirely: since 2002 in the House and 2004 in the Senate, there's been no overlap at all between the least liberal Democrats and the least conservative Republicans, compared to over 160 ideological moderates in Congress in 1971-72.

"Affective polarization" — how much people dislike the other side — has grown sharply. A 2019 review using American National Election Study data found affective polarization, measured as warmth toward one's own party minus warmth toward the opposing party, rose from 22.64 degrees in 1978 to 40.87 degrees in 2016. More recent data shows this trend continuing: Pew polling found that in 2022, 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats viewed the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans—up dramatically from 47% and 35% in 2016.

The U.S. is polarizing faster than peer democracies. In 1978, the average American rated members of their own party 27 points higher than the other party; by 2016, that gap had grown to 45.9 points — an increase of 4.8 points per decade. Polarization also rose in Canada, New Zealand, and Switzerland over the same period, but to a lesser extent, while it actually decreased in the UK, Australia, Germany, Norway, and Sweden.

Self-identified moderates are disappearing. The percentage of Americans identifying as moderate has declined from an average of 43% in 1992 to 34% in 2024. By 2025, the share of Americans identifying as politically moderate reached a record low of 34%, with 77% of Republicans self-identifying as conservative and 55% of Democrats as liberal.

Geographic sorting is accelerating. The share of Republicans who view Democrats as "very unfavorable" rose from 17% in 1994 to 62% in 2024, while the share of Americans living in landslide counties grew from 39% in 1992 to 57% by 2024.

The important caveats

Policy positions may not be as far apart as the rhetoric suggests. Political scientist Frances Lee argues that politicians aren't necessarily farther apart on policy issues than in the past — what measurements often show is that voting behavior has become more predictable, with politicians voting strictly along party lines on divisive topics rather than reflecting genuinely wider policy gaps.

Ordinary Americans are less divided than elites. Research suggests polarization in American politics is primarily a phenomenon among Americans who are deeply involved in politics and very expressive about their views — those less politically engaged are not as polarized. Similarly, American voters are less ideologically polarized than they think they are, with that misperception greatest among the most politically engaged, and Americans across parties actually share many policy preferences.

Historically, the U.S. has seen worse — if you go back far enough. Some political scientists point out that, viewed against data from the last two centuries, today's polarization isn't such an alarming anomaly compared to levels occurring during the era of slavery and similar historical flashpoints. Still, following a more balanced mid-20th-century Congress, ideological distance between the parties began growing in the 1970s to the point where Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the Reconstruction era of the late 1870s.

A recent study suggests things may be leveling off slightly. Cambridge researchers found polarization almost flatlined during the 1990s and 2000s, then began rising steadily starting in 2008, and while this polarization may have begun to level off during Biden's term, it remains far higher than in previous decades. Interestingly, a 2025 Nature Human Behaviour study found that while Democrats and Republicans have grown more ideologically polarized over the past 30 years, partisan "sorting" has actually declined since 2010 — suggesting the relationship between ideology and party identity is complicated.

Bottom line

By nearly every empirical measure researchers track — congressional voting records, feeling-thermometer surveys, self-identified ideology, and cross-national comparisons — polarization in the U.S. today is higher than at any point in the last 50+ years of modern measurement, and the U.S. stands out globally for both its level and rate of polarization. The main caveat is that much of this is "affective" (emotional/identity-based) rather than purely about policy substance, and ordinary non-engaged citizens are less divided than political elites and activists. Going back further than the modern era (e.g., to the Civil War), the picture is murkier — some scholars argue today's divisions don't yet rival the deepest historical ruptures in American politics.