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

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

By most measures, yes — at least in the "modern" era (roughly the last 50-70 years) — though there are important nuances depending on how you measure it and how far back you look.

Evidence That Polarization Has Increased

Congress has grown more ideologically divided than at any point in recent history. 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 is driven by both parties becoming more ideologically cohesive—there are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.

Historical data going back further shows the same pattern: following a period of a much more balanced Congress during the middle of the 20th century, ideological distance between the parties began to grow during the 1970s to the extent that Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the late 1870s Reconstruction Era.

Ordinary Americans have grown more hostile toward the opposing party. This "affective polarization" (how much people dislike the other side, regardless of specific policy views) has risen dramatically. Levels of affective polarization have risen more than two-fold since the 1970s when the American National Election Studies began asking citizens to rate how they felt about members of either major party. One dataset shows affective polarization, calculated as the difference between favorability ratings, rose from 22.64 degrees in 1978 to 40.87 degrees in 2016.

Pew's landmark 2014 study found: Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan acrimony is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in recent history. Specifically, responses to 10 political values questions asked since 1994 show the number of Americans in the ideological "tails" has doubled from 10% to 21%, while the center has shrunk to 39% who take a roughly equal number of liberal and conservative positions.

Partisan dislike has also deepened: today these sentiments are broader and deeper than in the recent past — in 1994, a majority of Republicans had unfavorable impressions of the Democratic Party, but just 17% had very unfavorable opinions (a share that has since grown substantially).

This isn't just a survey artifact. Some researchers questioned whether declining survey response rates were inflating these numbers, but a 2024 Rice/Stanford study found while response rates to political surveys are on the decline, people are more polarized than ever, concluding the increase in negative feelings toward the other party is real and not just because of how the surveys are done.

Important Caveats

1. It depends on your historical baseline. If you zoom out to the full sweep of U.S. history rather than just the post-WWII "consensus" era, today's polarization looks less exceptional. Some political scientists have pointed out that viewed within the context of data from the last two centuries, today's levels of polarization are not such an alarming anomaly compared to those occurring during the time of slavery and similar points along the historical continuum. The mid-20th century may have been the unusual low-polarization period, not today's normal.

2. Elite/legislative polarization and public/policy polarization aren't the same thing. Political scientist Frances Lee argues that doesn't mean politicians are farther apart on policy issues than in the past — what's often missed are changes in the scope of policy issues over time. Many of today's votes are narrower in effect than 1960s civil rights legislation, making historical comparisons difficult.

3. The public isn't uniformly polarized on issues. Some sources note the general public is less divided on a range of issues than in the past, with many policies enjoying bipartisan support — the division shows up more in identity and emotion (hating the other team) than in issue-by-issue policy preferences for many Americans.

Bottom Line

If "the past" means the mid-20th century (roughly 1940s–1970s), polarization today is clearly worse by nearly every metric political scientists track — congressional voting patterns, partisan animosity, and ideological sorting. If "the past" means the entire history of the U.S. (including eras like the Civil War), current polarization is severe but perhaps not unprecedented. Most researchers agree the trend line has been sharply upward since the 1970s, accelerating further in the 2000s and 2010s.