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

Polarization today is high — but is it the worst ever? I'll dig into historical metrics to compare.

Political polarization is worse than it has been in the recent past by most modern measures — but not necessarily worse than the most divisive periods in all of American history. The answer depends on what kind of polarization and what time frame is being measured.

1. By modern metrics, polarization is at a historic high

Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization (differences between policy positions) and affective polarization (dislike and distrust of political out-groups), both of which are apparent in the United States. Generally speaking, scholars recognize an increase in both ideological and affective polarization in the United States over time, with some research suggesting that affective polarization is growing more rapidly than ideological polarization.

•Ideological distance: A Pew Research Center analysis found Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.

•Growth over decades: Polarization has increased since the 1970s, with rapid increases in polarization during the 2000s onwards. Among U.S. legislators polarization is asymmetric, as it has primarily been driven by a rightward shift among Republicans in Congress.

•Negative views of the other party: According to the Pew Research Center, 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.

Other Pew data show the same trend in more detail:

> In 1994, only 17% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats reported very unfavorable views of the opposing party. By 2016, those numbers had risen to 58% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats.

The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions doubled over the past two decades, from 10 percent to 21 percent.

Recent research suggests that political polarization in the United States is more pronounced now than in the past -- at least among members of the nation's major political parties. As of 2025, polarization was higher than any point in current history.

•Fewer moderates: 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. Among the public, in 2025 the percentage of Americans self-identifying as politically moderate reached a record low of 34%.

•Faster than other democracies: In the U.S., affective polarization has increased more dramatically since the late 1970s than in the eight other countries they examined—the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden. A Brown University study released in 2020 found that the U.S. was polarizing faster compared to other democratic countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.

2. But not the worst in all of American history

Historians and some political scientists argue the current period, while highly polarized, does not exceed the deepest crises of the past:

•The most divisive time in our history was in the years leading up to the Civil War.

•A Brookings review of historical scholarship notes: for all the hype about the ruptures and partisan rancor in contemporary American society, the strife pales in comparison with much of the nation's past.

•Stanford political scientists David Brady and Hahrie Han examine three crisis periods - the Civil War, the industrial revolution, and the New Deal - as benchmarks. They look to the Civil War era as a benchmark for total polarization. The political parties were not only widely separated ideologically but were highly unified around their respective positions, and the public seems to have been equally polarized. Thus, polarization during the Civil War era was both extremely broad and extremely deep.

More broadly, they remind us that polarization in American politics is nothing new and that the country's political institutions and policymaking processes have withstood sharp divisions between the parties.

The Gilded Age of the late 19th century (c. 1870 – 1900) is also considered to be one of the most politically polarized periods in American history, with open political violence and highly polarized political discourse.

3. Nuance: Sorting vs. Polarization, and perception vs. reality

Political scientist Morris Fiorina has argued the opposite of the popular narrative:

> Despite widespread perceptions of rising political polarization in the United States, the American public is no more polarized than it was before the Reagan era.

In that view, what has happened is party sorting, the process by which voters have aligned themselves with the party that better represents their ideological temperament. The relative numbers of conservatives and liberals may not have changed all that much, but their party affiliation certainly has.

Supporting that, some research suggests Americans are less polarized than they think, and that polarization in American politics is primarily a phenomenon among Americans who are deeply involved in politics and very expressive about their political views.

Bottom line

•Compared to the last 50-60 years for which systematic survey and congressional voting data exist — roughly since the 1970s and especially since the 1990s — polarization is worse by almost every measure: ideological gap, affective dislike, consistency of views, and loss of the center.

•Compared to the 1850s-1860s (slavery/secession) and the 1890s Gilded Age, most historians say the current divide is less broad, less deep, and less violent, even if it feels more pervasive today due to national media, social media, and geographic sorting.

Citations (1)

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