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

Polarization today feels unprecedented — I'll pull recent research to compare it with past eras.

Is political polarization worse than in the past? The short answer is: compared to recent decades - yes, dramatically. Compared to the full sweep of American history - no.

Researchers distinguish different types of polarization, and the time frame matters.

1. In the last 50 years: Yes, the worst in modern history

Ideological and affective polarization have both risen sharply since the 1970s-1990s.

Detailed Pew data shows: in 1994 just 17% of Republicans had very unfavorable opinions of Democrats and just 16% of Democrats had very unfavorable views of Republicans. Since then, highly negative views have more than doubled: 43% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats now view the opposite party in strongly negative terms. More recent summaries put that even higher: in 1994, about 16% of Democrats and 17% of Republicans held "very unfavorable" views of the other party. By 2022, those numbers had jumped above 60% for both sides.

A concrete example: 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.

The US is also polarizing faster than peer democracies.

A Brown/Stanford study using National Bureau of Economic Research data that presented the first ever multi-nation evidence on long-term trends in "affective polarization" found that 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.

Political polarization among Americans has grown rapidly in the last 40 years—more than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany.

Using a 0-100 "feeling thermometer," the study found In 1978, the average American rated the members of their own political party 27 points higher than members of the other major party. By 2016, Americans were rating their own party 45.9 points higher than the other party.

A more recent Cambridge analysis of more than 35,000 American National Election Studies responses between 1988 and 2024 found divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward and that issue polarization has increased 64%.

2. In the last 150+ years: No, not the worst ever

Historians overwhelmingly caution against saying the present is the most divided ever.

> As a historian who has written and taught about the Civil War era for several decades, I know that current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century.

> Between Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox in April 1865, the nation literally broke apart.

That period saw 620,000 military deaths – the equivalent of approximately 6.5 million dead in the United States of 2020, and as the historian notes, No political issue in 2020 approaches slavery in the mid-19th century in terms of potential divisiveness. The era included members of Congress physically attacking each other — U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts into bloody insensibility on the floor of the Senate chamber— and seven states seceding after the 1860 election.

As one synthesis 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 and There have been long stretches of American history in which conflicts were far worse.

3. Why it feels worse now

Researchers point to several reasons polarization today feels uniquely intense, even if it is not historically unprecedented:

A global comparison also adds nuance: while the US has seen the largest increase among 12 OECD countries over four decades, when ranking current levels of affective polarization across 53 countries, estimates place Türkiye, Hungary, and Kenya at the top... with the United States squarely in the middle of the pack.

Bottom line: If you mean "worse than your parents' or grandparents' adult lifetimes" — since the 1970s-1990s — the data says yes, by almost every measurable indicator of ideological consistency, affective dislike, and legislative gridlock. If you mean "worse than any time in American history" — no, the Civil War era, and other periods of open political violence and national fracture, were far more divided.