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

Is polarization worse than ever? I'll dig into historical data to compare today's divide with the past.

It depends on how you measure it, and over what time period.

By modern measures, yes - it is at a historic high

Scholars distinguish between two types of polarization:

Both are apparent in the United States, but affective polarization is growing more rapidly.

By many measures political polarization has been climbing for decades and is at its highest levels in modern history (some analysts say the worst since the Civil War).

Specific findings:

Polarization "declined in both chambers from roughly the beginning of the 20th Century until World War II. It was then fairly stable until the late 1970s and has been increasing steadily over the past 25 years". Other work notes "Polarization has increased since the 1970s, with rapid increases in polarization during the 2000s onwards".

In detail: "In 1994, approximately 17% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats held very unfavorable views of the opposing party. By 2016, those figures had risen to 58% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats. In 2022, 62% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats reported very unfavorable views".

Another study found "Divisions within the US population on social and political issues have increased by 64% since 1988, with almost all this coming after 2008".

Polarization among legislators is also described as asymmetric, "as it has primarily been driven by a rightward shift among Republicans in Congress".

This period is also described as more polarized than other contentious modern eras: "We’re seeing more polarization than the 1960s, with Vietnam and the culture wars? The 1950s, with segregation and McCarthyism? The answer is yes", while the Gilded Age of the late 19th century (c. 1870-1900) "is considered to be one of the most politically polarized periods in American history" and the 1950s and 1960s were marked by high levels of political bipartisanship.

But not worse than the most divided periods in all of American history

Historians widely argue current divisions pale compared to the mid-19th century:

> As a historian who has written and taught about the Civil War era for several decades, I know that current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century.

Between Lincoln's election and Lee's surrender the nation literally broke apart, and "Four years of civil war produced at least 620,000 military deaths – the equivalent of approximately 6.5 million dead in the United States of 2020".

> "To compare anything that has transpired in the past few years to this cataclysmic upheaval represents a spectacular lack of understanding about American history"

Other commentators note "Things have been worse in American history — the 1850s, the 1930s, even the 1960s", and that the 1960s saw riots raged across America in response to racial injustice and before that the legacy of the Civil War lingered even leading to violence on the Senate floor.

Contemporary American political scientists who say both the populace and elected officials are "the most politically polarized in history since the Civil War" are explicitly using the Civil War as the benchmark that has not been exceeded. Another formulation is that polarization is "higher than at any time since the end of the Civil War" - implying the Civil War era itself was higher.

A nuance: elite vs. mass public

Whether the public itself is as polarized as Congress is debated. Scholars distinguish elite-driven and mass polarization:

> Morris Fiorina argues that the American public is not as polarized as is often assumed, suggesting that elite polarization is wrongly imputed to the general public. Conversely, Alan Abramowitz argues that mass polarization is actually imposing polarization upon elites

Other research suggests "Americans are less polarized than they think, and that there is 'significant ideological overlap and agreement on policies'" and that ideological polarization is felt most strongly among the most politically engaged.

Bottom line: