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Muse Spark 1.2Oct 1, 2026meta/muse-spark-1.2-20260805

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

Polarization is rising - but is it uniquely worse? I'll pull the latest data and historical comparisons to answer.

Yes, by most modern measures - but with important historical caveats.

What "worse" means depends on the time scale and type of polarization

Scholars distinguish between:

•Ideological polarization - differences between policy positions, and
•Affective polarization - dislike and distrust of political out-groups

Generally scholars recognize an increase in both in the United States over time. Some research suggests that affective polarization is growing more rapidly than ideological polarization.

Affective polarization — the increasing dislike of the opposing party — is the most dramatic trend in American politics over the past two decades, and has increased markedly in the past two decades.

Compared to the recent past (past 50-70 years): Yes, significantly worse

•As of 2025, polarization was higher than any point in current history.
•In a report published in May 2025, the Pew Research Center found that Americans are more divided and less trusting of one another than at any point in recent decades.
•A Pew analysis from 2022 found the perception that polarization has increased is correct: Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.
•Pew's long-running American Values Survey found values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any point in the past 25 years. The average partisan gap nearly doubled over this 25-year period – from 10 percentage points in 1987 to 18 percentage points, with nearly all of the increases occurring during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
•Other Pew measures show:
•Members of both parties who have unfavorable opinions of the opposing party doubled between 1994 and 2014, while those who have very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party are at record highs as of 2022.
•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.
•88% of Americans in a 2022 survey said that there are strong conflicts between people who support different political parties.
•In Congress, the trend is stark. In the 117th U.S. Congress from 2021 to 2023, there were about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans. For comparison, there were more than 160 moderates five decades earlier during the 92nd U.S. Congress from 1971-1972.
•According to Gallup, in 2025 the percentage of Americans self-identifying as politically moderate reached a record low of 34%.
•The 1950s and 1960s were marked by high levels of political bipartisanship, the results of a post-World War II "consensus". After decades of relatively little polarization, parties began pulling apart in the mid-1970s.
•The U.S. is polarizing faster than comparable democracies. In the U.S., affective polarization has increased more dramatically since the late 1970s than in the eight other countries examined — the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, and the U.S. has experienced a greater surge in ideological and affective polarization than comparable democracies.

Evidence from Congressional voting

Political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal's widely accepted metric, DW-NOMINATE, places every senator and representative on ideological scales based on roll-call voting.

Using that data:

•Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the end of Reconstruction.
•The level of polarization in Congress is now the highest since the end of the Civil War.

Other indicators:

•The left-right dimension alone accounts for about 85 percent of variance in all roll call voting, and in the 113th House and Senate voting was almost purely one-dimensional, accounting for about 93 percent of roll call voting choices.
•The overlap interval — how many Republicans lie to the right of the most right-leaning Democrat and vice versa — is today zero. In the 1960s, about 50 percent of the legislators in the two parties overlapped.
•Polarization among legislators is asymmetric, as it has primarily been driven by a rightward shift among Republicans in Congress, and polarization has increased since the 1970s, with rapid increases during the 2000s onwards.

Compared to the distant past (19th century): Not unprecedented

When viewed over 150-200 years, today is very polarized but not uniquely worse than the most divided eras:

•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.
•Historians argue current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century. Between Lincoln's election in 1860 and Lee's surrender in 1865, the nation literally broke apart.
•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, with open political violence and highly polarized political discourse.

In that sense, scholars often describe today as the most polarized since the Civil War / Reconstruction — meaning we have returned to, but not clearly exceeded, those historic peaks.

Bottom line

If you mean compared to living memory — the bipartisan mid-20th century, or even the 1980s-1990s — yes, virtually all measures show polarization is worse than it has been in the past, both ideologically and affectively, among elites and the public, and Americans correctly perceive it has increased.

If you mean compared to all of American history, today's polarization is among the worst, comparable to the late 19th century and the era around the Civil War, but historians argue the Civil War-era divide over slavery was still more divisive than today's disagreements.

Citations (4)

  1. 1wikipedia.orgEncyclopedias and referencequality 0.83
    Political polarization in the United States

    Backs: “What "worse" means depends on the time scale and type of polarization. Scholars distinguish between: Ideological polarization - differences between policy positions, and”

  2. 2pewresearch.orgNonprofits and think tanks
    Partisan Polarization Surges in Bush, Obama Years

    Backs: “A Pew analysis from 2022 found the perception that polarization has increased is correct: Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years. Pew's long-running American Values Survey found values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any…”

  3. 3bunkhistory.orgBlogs and newsletters
    The Polarized Congress of Today Has its Roots in the 1970s

    Backs: “The 1950s and 1960s were marked by high levels of political bipartisanship, the results of a post-World War II "consensus".”

  4. 4usc.eduAcademic
    Political polarization at its worst since the Civil War

    Backs: “Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the end of Reconstruction. The level of polarization in Congress is now the highest since the end of the Civil War. Other indicators:”