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

Short answer: It depends on what kind of polarization you mean and what time period you compare to—but by most measures, yes, especially in the US, though important caveats apply.

Ideological/Congressional Polarization: Highest in Decades

By measures of how far apart lawmakers vote, polarization is dramatic. 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. The shift has been structural: since 1971, Democrats and Republicans in the US House and Senate have both moved further away from the center, and while there were more than 160 moderates in 1971, a 2022 Pew report found there were roughly two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Some researchers push this comparison back even further. Following a period of a much more balanced Congress during the middle of the 20th century, ideological distance between the parties began to grow during the 1970s to the extent that Congress is now more polarized than at any time since the late 1870s Reconstruction Era. One concrete measure: the "overlap interval" shows how many Republicans lie to the right of the most right-leaning Democrat and vice versa—today, that overlap is zero, which was certainly not always true; in the 1960s, about 50 percent of legislators in the two parties overlapped.

Affective Polarization (how much people dislike the other side): Also at Record Levels

This is arguably the most striking trend. 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. Partisan animosity has grown sharply—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.

Important Caveats: Context Matters

1. The US has seen worse before. Historically, divisions have at times been far more severe. The United States has had multiple periods of division before—in some cases, significantly worse than what we have right now. The most obvious example is the Civil War era, which is why comparisons to "worst since the Civil War" are common—but that bar is extremely low.

2. Polarization may be leveling off recently. Recent academic research complicates the "ever-worsening" narrative. A Cambridge study found that polarization almost flatlined during the nineties and noughties, but surged from 2008 onward—and the polarization may have begun to level off during Biden's term, although it remains far higher than previous decades.

3. Actual policy disagreement may be smaller than perceived. There's a meaningful gap between how divided people feel and how divided they actually are on substance. One researcher argues that polarization in the US can feel much worse than it is, since 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. Supporting this, the same study found that despite shifts in opinion, both left- and right-leaning sides of the US population have stayed the same size since 1988, and the range of opinions within each cluster has not become more diverse—only the distance between the two has increased.

4. It's not universal globally. Polarization trends vary significantly by country. For example, recent New Zealand research found that historically, New Zealand has looked rather different than other countries, with research generally finding relatively limited affective polarisation there, and affective polarisation has actually declined in New Zealand since 2014, with the 2023 election not more polarised than previous elections—voters were even less affectively polarised in 2023 than in 2020.

Bottom Line

If you're asking about the United States specifically, most rigorous measures—congressional voting patterns, partisan animosity, and "sorting" by ideology—show polarization at or near modern record highs, particularly since the 1970s and accelerating after 2008. However, it hasn't necessarily surpassed America's most extreme historical episodes (like the pre-Civil War era), and there's debate about whether people's perception of division outpaces actual disagreement on policy substance. Globally, the picture is far more mixed—polarization isn't a universal trend and depends heavily on each country's political system and history.