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

I'll research this question to give you a well-informed answer based on current analysis and data.## Short answer: It's complicated — it depends on what kind of polarization you're measuring and what timeframe you compare it to.

Here's a more nuanced breakdown:

By several measures, yes — polarization is at modern highs

In Congress, ideological divergence between the parties is the worst it's been in decades. 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 number of moderates has collapsed: there are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.

Looking back even further using congressional voting-pattern data (DW-NOMINATE scores going back to 1868), polarization measures are stronger around 1880 to 1910 and 2000 to 2020, and weaker around 1930 to 1980 — meaning today's levels rival the Gilded Age, not just "recent decades."

Among voters, division has intensified too. The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. Partisan hostility has grown even faster than policy disagreement — partisan animosity has increased substantially over the same period, with the share in each party holding a highly negative view of the opposing party more than doubling since 1994.

A 2024/2025 study tracking issue polarization since 1988 found divisions within the US population on social and political issues have increased by 64% since 1988, with almost all this coming after 2008 — though interestingly, this polarization may have begun to level off during Biden's term, although it remains far higher than previous decades.

Internationally, the U.S. stands out: the US has experienced the most rapid growth in affective polarization among the general electorate since 1980 among 12 OECD countries considered in a 2024 study, with five other countries experiencing smaller increases and six experiencing declines. One researcher noted this is partly because "the United States is unusual in having a left and a right of roughly equal size... it may help explain why polarisation in the US feels so intense."

But historically speaking — no, it's not the worst ever

If you zoom out to the full sweep of American history, today's polarization looks much milder. A historian specializing in the Civil War era argues current divisions pale in comparison to those of the mid-19th century — an era that included actual secession, a war that killed hundreds of thousands, and violence inside Congress itself (a senator was caned nearly to death on the Senate floor). Political scientists studying long-run data similarly 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 other turbulent historical periods.

The key distinction: ideological vs. "affective" polarization

Researchers increasingly separate two types:

This second kind — the visceral dislike of the "other side" — may be where the U.S. is genuinely in uncharted territory compared to most of its own history, even if the Civil War era had worse ideological splits and far more violence.

Bottom line