More answers like this
GPT-5Sep 20, 2026openai/gpt-5-2025-08-07
Is political polarization worse than it's been in the past?
Short answer: it depends on what you mean by “polarization,” and whose polarization you care about.
•Elected officials (elite polarization): Yes—by most scholarly measures (e.g., roll‑call–based ideology scores), Congress has become more polarized steadily since the late 1970s and is now at or near the most polarized point in more than a century. The parties overlap far less than they did a few decades ago, making compromise rarer.
•The public’s policy views (mass ideological polarization): Mixed. Average Americans have not become uniformly more “left” or “right” on every issue; many still hold a mix of views. But issue positions have sorted by party much more cleanly than in the mid‑20th century, so Democrats and Republicans now disagree more predictably across a bundle of issues.
•Affective/identity polarization (how much partisans dislike the other side): Yes—this has risen sharply since the 1980s. People’s partisan identities increasingly align with other social identities (race, religion, education, culture, urban–rural), creating “mega‑identities.” Negative partisanship (voting mainly to oppose the other party) is stronger than it was a few decades ago.
•Behavior and elections: Ticket‑splitting has declined, straight‑ticket voting has risen, and communities have become more politically homogeneous. National politics now dominates local races, further hardening partisan divisions.
•Compared with earlier eras:
•The 1850s (pre–Civil War) and, to a lesser extent, the 1890s/early 1900s were also intensely polarized, sometimes more dangerously so in terms of constitutional stability.
•The late 1960s–1970s saw more political violence than today, but parties were less ideologically sorted back then, which left more room for cross‑party coalitions in Congress.
•Today’s distinctive mix is extreme party sorting among elites plus strong affective polarization among the public, which yields gridlock, norm‑breaking tactics, and high mistrust—even without the widespread political violence of some past periods.
Bottom line: Among political elites and in terms of inter‑party animosity among voters, polarization is worse than in living memory. In terms of average citizens’ overall ideological extremity, the picture is more nuanced. If you tell me which dimension (Congress, voters, media, social trust) or which time period you want to compare to, I can tailor a more specific answer.