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

Short answer: Yes, by most measures — especially in the U.S. — but with important nuance

The evidence strongly suggests that current political polarization, particularly in the United States, is at or near record highs by several key measures, though the picture is more complicated when you dig into why and how.

Evidence that it's genuinely worse

Elected officials/Congress: a Pew Research Center analysis finds that, on average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years. This isn't just perception — both parties have grown more ideologically cohesive, with now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.

Partisan animosity (affective polarization): This is where the data is most striking. Pew Research Center polling reveals a sharp rise in partisan hostility: 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. More recent data shows this gap continuing to widen — the partisan gaps in these views are wider now than at any point since Pew first asked this question in 1997.

Self-identification: Republicans have always been most likely to identify as conservative, but in 2024, 77% described themselves as such, marking a new high, including 24% of Republicans who said they were very conservative, also a new high.

Public perception: Americans increasingly see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War. A 2025 survey found 89 percent of local officials say polarization is negatively affecting the United States, the highest figure since data collection began in August 2024.

Long-term trend: Polarization has increased since the 1970s, with rapid increases in polarization during the 2000s onwards. 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.

The important caveats

1. It's more about "team hatred" than policy disagreement. Research suggests mass polarization in the United States is less about policy-based division and more about people liking their own political camp and disliking the opposing one. Relatedly, researchers found that measurements showing increased division may partly reflect that politicians' voting behavior has become more predictable — unlike the bipartisan support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, today's politicians tend to vote strictly with their party on divisive topics.

2. The public may be more polarized in feeling than in actual views. One recent large-scale study found that polarization in the US can feel much worse than it is — political groups have moved further apart in recent years, but these divisions are still fuzzy, and Americans are not split into entirely opposing tribes when it comes to the issues. That same research found both left- and right-leaning sides of the US population have stayed the same size since 1988, with only the distance between the two increasing — and notably, there's no clear evidence that opinion polarization is increasing globally, suggesting this may be a particularly American phenomenon rather than a universal trend.

3. Historical context matters. The U.S. has survived worse: the United States has had multiple periods of division before—in some cases, significantly worse than what we have right now (most obviously the Civil War era). So "worst ever" claims need qualifying — it's typically "worst in the last 50-150 years," not literally worst ever.

Bottom line

If you're asking about the U.S. specifically, the data is fairly unambiguous: by measures of congressional voting behavior, partisan animosity, and self-reported ideological extremity, we're at or near modern-era record highs, and the trend has been accelerating since roughly 2008-2016. The main caveat is that this is driven more by tribal identity and dislike of the other side than by Americans actually holding more extreme or far-apart policy views — and it's largely a national/elite-level phenomenon, since polarization at the local community level remains comparatively mild.