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

Political polarization today is genuinely severe by many modern measures — but whether it's the "worst ever" depends heavily on what you're measuring and what historical period you compare it to.

Evidence that today's polarization is historically extreme

Congressional/elite polarization: By objective voting-record measures, Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the late 1870s Reconstruction Era, following decades of growing ideological distance between the parties since the 1970s. One striking measure is the "overlap interval" — the overlap interval shows how many Republicans lie to the right of the most right-leaning Democrat and how many Democrats lie to the left of the most left-leaning Republicans, and today that interval is zero. This was not always true — in the 1960s, intervals existed where about 50 percent of legislators in the two parties overlapped.

Partisan identity: none of the three main ideological groupings—conservatives, moderates, and liberals—has had majority-level status since Gallup began tracking ideology in 1992, and the share of Republicans identifying as moderate fell below 20% for the first time since Gallup started this measure.

Affective polarization (how partisans feel about each other): Americans increasingly dislike the opposing party on a personal level. the share of people who identify with each party viewing the other party favorably is barely above 10% in recent polling, with favorable evaluations of the opposing party in Congress even rarer, below 10%. Partisan gaps in presidential approval have also widened dramatically — George W. Bush had a 68-point partisan approval gap, compared to a 37-point gap for his father, and a wide partisan gap in presidential approval has become the norm since then.

Satisfaction with government: Democrats' satisfaction with the system of government is at a historic low for either party, with just 12% of Democrats satisfied compared to 52% of Republicans — the first time in 25 years any party dipped below 20% satisfaction. The United States is currently tied with 18 other nations—including India, Mexico, and Pakistan—for among the highest rates of polarization nationally.

Local-level spillover: Polarization isn't confined to Washington. A recent survey found that 41% of local officials reported "substantial negative effects" of polarization, about a 10-point spike from previous surveys, and 91% of local officials believe polarization is "substantially" hurting the country at the national level.

Why historians push back on "worst ever"

Despite these grim modern statistics, historians who study earlier periods argue that framing today as unprecedented ignores much darker chapters:

The Civil War era: a historian who has studied the Civil War era for decades argues that current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century. The scale of actual bloodshed makes the comparison stark: four years of civil war produced at least 620,000 military deaths—the equivalent of approximately 6.5 million dead in the United States of 2020. Congress itself saw literal violence, not just rhetorical combat, in the lead-up to the war.

The Gilded Age/Reconstruction: Some political scientists note 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 historical points. Campaign culture then was also brutally personal: presidential elections between the Civil War and the end of the 19th century were "the loudest, roughest political campaigns in our history." The 1884 election was described by a contemporary as "the dirtiest, most disgusting and disgraceful our nation has ever known."

Bottom line

The honest answer is both things are true simultaneously: by rigorous quantitative measures of elite (congressional) polarization, affective partisan dislike, and satisfaction gaps, we are at or near modern record highs — essentially the worst since the 1870s-1890s. But in absolute terms of societal breakdown, violence, and constitutional crisis, the Civil War era and arguably the Gilded Age were far more severe — polarization back then led to secession, war, and assassination attempts, not just angry tweets and gridlocked Congress. So "worse than ever" is an overstatement if you include the 1850s-60s, but "worse than at any point in living memory, approaching 19th-century extremes" is well supported by the data.