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

Short answer: It depends on which type of polarization you mean — and by some measures, yes, it's near historic highs; by others, no, the U.S. has seen worse.

Scholars distinguish between two things that often get conflated:

1. Affective polarization (how much people dislike the other side) — this does appear to be at or near record levels

Americans increasingly see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War, and Pew Research Center polling reveals a sharp rise in partisan hostility. Specifically, 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. Similarly, 62% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats had a very unfavorable view of the other party in 2022, which is a higher percentage than it was just five years before.

More recently, a September 2024 Gallup poll found that a record 80 percent of U.S. adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while just 18 percent believe the country is united — the highest percentage on record, held consistently across gender, age, race, political affiliation, and educational attainment.

Comparatively, the United States, by any measure, is more politically polarized than either Scotland or England pre- or post-referendum, and while political polarization is growing in other countries worldwide, it is more dramatic in the United States — polarizing faster than other democracies.

2. Ideological/structural polarization — the U.S. has been here (or worse) before

Historians point to at least two earlier eras that rivaled or exceeded today's divisions:

The Civil War era: This is widely considered the most extreme case, since the Civil War era saw millions of Americans take up arms because they could not imagine a future as part of the same country, with carnage motivated by a single issue: states' rights regarding slavery.

The Gilded Age (1870s–1890s): This period is often seen as a closer structural parallel. According to the quantitative indicators scholars use to measure political polarization, the Gilded Age stands out for some of the most party-polarized Congresses of all time. Politically, the post-Reconstruction period was marked by "bitterly contested elections yielding narrow and shifting majorities" and "hyper-partisanship because the margins were so narrow with every election there was a prospect of bringing your party back to power." Notably, four of the five times a U.S. president was elected despite losing the popular vote occurred in the Gilded Age and today's era, and in the seven elections between 1876 and 1900, only McKinley topped 50%.

Some historians argue partisan passion was actually stronger then: Americans were far more passionately invested in national politics in the Gilded Age than they are today, and phenomena like abusive language and violent clashes over election outcomes are not unprecedented. Indeed, Americans engaged in fistfights over politics in saloons and on urban streetcars.

The key difference: today's polarization is broader but less violent

One important distinction: polarization during the Civil War era differs from polarization today—modern polarization has fractured and now consists of a political landscape filled with extremely different viewpoints on a wide range of issues, rather than one dominant issue.

Meanwhile, a global/historical perspective offers a check on "worse than ever" narratives: it is reasonable to argue that, when viewed in a historical context, current societal divisions are minor compared to those which led to the major global conflicts of the 20th century. What's genuinely new, researchers argue, is technological: what has fundamentally changed is the emergence of the information age (the internet, social media, AI) and its integration into, and domination over, our contemporary political discourse.

Bottom line

So "worse than ever" is defensible for affective polarization within the polling era, but not when compared to the most severe periods of American history like the Civil War or Gilded Age.