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

To answer whether political polarization is worse than it has been in the past, political scientists and historians generally look at two different metrics: elite (or institutional) polarization (how politicians vote and behave) and affective polarization (how regular citizens feel about the other side).

The short answer is no, it is not worse than the absolute peak of American history—the Civil War era. However, yes, it is worse than it has been at any point in the last 150 years.

Here is a breakdown of how today’s political division compares to the past, why it feels so intense, and how researchers measure it.

1. Elite Polarization: The Disappearing Middle in Congress

To measure polarization among politicians, political scientists use NOMINATE scores, which analyze every roll-call vote in Congress since 1789 to place politicians on a liberal-to-conservative spectrum.

2. Affective Polarization: Growing Animosity in the Public

"Affective polarization" measures how much supporters of one party dislike and distrust supporters of the other. Researchers track this using "feeling thermometers" (rating the other party from 0 to 100) and polling on social distances.

Why Does It Feel Worse Than Ever?

If today’s polarization is technically less severe than the Civil War, why does it feel completely unprecedented? Historians and sociologists point to three main reasons:

A. The "Anomaly" of the Mid-20th Century

Many Americans alive today grew up or formed their political views during the mid-20th century (roughly the 1940s through the 1970s). This post-WWII era was actually a historical anomaly of exceptionally low polarization and high national consensus. Because that era of cooperation is our baseline of "normalcy," the return to historical levels of high polarization feels shockingly hostile.

B. The "Sorting" of American Life

In the past, political parties were big, messy coalitions. A person's political party did not necessarily tell you their race, religion, where they lived, or what kind of lifestyle they lived.
Today, the parties have undergone complete sorting:

Because political identity now perfectly aligns with cultural, geographical, and social identities, a political disagreement is no longer just a debate over tax rates—it is felt as an existential threat to one's entire way of life.

C. The Media and the "Misperception Problem"

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the media was highly partisan, but it was geographically fragmented. Today, the 24-hour cable news cycle, talk radio, and social media algorithms incentivize outrage and nationalize local conflicts.

This has created what researchers call a "misperception problem." Because the most extreme voices get the most engagement online and on television, average Americans vastly overestimate how extreme the "other side" actually is. Studies show that most Americans actually hold relatively moderate views, but they harbor intense animosity toward the other party because they assume ordinary voters are as extreme as the political elites they see on their screens.

Summary

If "the past" means the 1850s and 1860s, then political polarization is not as bad as it has been; we are not on the verge of physical warfare, and the federal government is still intact.

However, if "the past" means any time in modern living memory, yes, polarization is at a historic, unprecedented high. The combination of perfect social sorting, zero overlap in Congress, and an media ecosystem built to amplify outrage has made today's political division uniquely rigid and difficult to resolve.