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

The answer depends on which type of polarization you're measuring and what time frame you use for comparison—but by most measures, yes, it's worse than it has been in generations, though not necessarily the worst in all of U.S. history.

Congressional/elite polarization: worst since Reconstruction

Using voting-record data (NOMINATE scores), political scientists have found that 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 striking measure is the "overlap interval"—this measure 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. Today, the overlap interval is zero. As recently as the 1960s, you had intervals where about 50 percent of the legislators in the two parties overlapped.

Affective polarization: at historic highs

This is where the data is most striking. One analysis notes that the 80-point partisan gap in Trump approval is the highest recorded in modern polling era, compared to 70pt for Obama and 60pt for Clinton, and that 63% of Americans see the opposing party as a "threat to democracy," with affective polarization having roughly doubled since 1994. Specifically, the share of Republicans who view Democrats as "very unfavorable" has risen from 17% in 1994 to 62% in 2024.

Pew's long-running research backs this up: Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in recent history. Geographic sorting has reinforced this: in 1992, 39% of Americans lived in "landslide counties" where one presidential candidate won by 20+ percentage points; by 2024, 57% did.

Recent data suggests this trend isn't slowing. A September 2024 Gallup poll found a record 80 percent of U.S. adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while just 18 percent believe the country is united. And global expert-assessment data (V-Dem) shows the Political Polarization Score of the United States in 2025 was 2.30 points, up from 1.94 in 2024, growing for two years in a row, with the highest score observed in 2025, when it reached 2.30 out of the entire 1900–2025 dataset.

But a key historical caveat: it's not unprecedented

Historians studying the Civil War era push back hard on "most divided ever" claims. One Civil War historian argues current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century, pointing to things like caning, secession, and assassination—literal violence between lawmakers and the country splitting apart entirely. Similarly, congressional researchers 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 points along the historical continuum.

An important nuance: perception vs. actual policy disagreement

Recent research from Cambridge complicates the "worse than ever" narrative by separating feelings from actual policy positions. This research found that 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. Interestingly, the rise isn't symmetric: most of this shift is down to the liberal side of the American public moving in a more progressive direction—the US left was 31.5% more socially liberal in 2024 compared to 1988, while the US right was only 2.8% more conservative. The same study found no clear evidence that opinion polarization is increasing on a global scale, suggesting something specific to American political dynamics rather than a universal trend.

Bottom line

So "worse than it's ever been" is an overstatement if you're including the Civil War, but "worse than at any point in the last 60-150 years" on most meaningful metrics is well-supported by current data.