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GPT-5Sep 22, 2026openai/gpt-5-2025-08-07
Is political polarization worse than it's been in the past?
Short answer: It depends what you mean by “polarization.”
•In Congress (elite ideological polarization): By the main roll‑call metric used by political scientists, party separation is at or near its highest level since the late 19th century. So among elected officials, yes—today is about as polarized as any period for which we have comparable data.
•Among the public on issues (policy views): Americans are more “sorted” (Democrats are more uniformly liberal; Republicans more uniformly conservative) than a few decades ago, but the public is not uniformly at ideological extremes on most policies. There’s still overlap on many specific issues, so this part is mixed rather than “worst ever.”
•In feelings toward the other party (affective polarization): Negative feelings and distrust across party lines have risen sharply since the late 1970s and are at record highs in modern surveys. In that sense, it is worse than in recent decades.
•Historical perspective: Earlier eras—especially the 1850s–60s (pre–Civil War/Reconstruction), the 1890s, and the late 1960s–70s—also saw extreme conflict, realignment, and even political violence. So while today’s elite and affective polarization are exceptionally high in modern data, U.S. history has seen comparably or more destabilizing divides before.
If you’d like, I can share specific sources and charts (e.g., congressional DW‑NOMINATE trends, Pew survey time series on partisans’ feelings, and studies on sorting vs extremity).