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

Political polarization is a complex topic, and the answer depends on what exactly you're measuring and what timeframe you're comparing. Let me look into current research on this.# Is Political Polarization Worse Than It's Been in the Past?

Short answer: In terms of recent decades (since the 1950s-60s), yes—by most measures polarization is at or near record highs. But viewed across all of American history, it's not unprecedented.

The case that it's worse now

Affective polarization (how much people dislike the "other side") has surged. The US has experienced the most rapid growth in affective polarization among the general electorate since 1980 among the 12 OECD countries considered in a 2024 study, with five other countries experiencing smaller increases in polarization, and six experiencing declines in polarization.

Pew's landmark research found that Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan acrimony is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in recent history. The negativity has intensified dramatically: In 1994, just 17% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats had very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party. 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. By 2022, those numbers climbed even higher—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.

Self-identification has become more extreme. In 2024, the shares of Republicans identifying as conservative and Democrats identifying as liberal both reached record highs. The percentage of Americans identifying as moderate has declined from an average of 43% in 1992 to 34% in 2024.

A key inflection point was 2008. Cambridge research tracking ANES data since 1988 found that almost all the rise in US polarisation over political issues since the late 1980s occurred from 2008 onwards, driven mostly by the American left becoming more socially liberal over time. That study found divisions within the US population on social and political issues have increased by 64% since 1988, with almost all this coming after 2008.

Geographic and social sorting has intensified, with Americans increasingly living, socializing, and consuming media only with like-minded people, reducing cross-partisan contact.

The important caveats

Policy positions aren't necessarily further apart than in the past—predictability is. Political scientist Frances Lee makes a crucial point: politicians may not be farther apart on policy issues than in the past—what some measurements actually show is that voting behavior has become more predictable. Unlike the bipartisan support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, today's politicians tend to vote strictly with their party on divisive topics.

Americans agree more on policy than the rhetoric suggests. Research highlighted by Facing History notes that the general public is less divided on a range of issues than in the past, and many policies have bipartisan support from members of both parties. Much of this is "us vs. them" tribalism rather than genuine policy disagreement, according to recent polling analysis showing broad cross-partisan support for issues like Medicare drug negotiation and background checks despite intense partisan animosity.

Historically, America has seen worse. Wikipedia's overview of the topic notes that the Gilded Age of the late 19th century (c. 1870–1900) is considered one of the most politically polarized periods in American history, with open political violence and highly polarized political discourse, and the election of 1896 led to an era of one-party rule. The mid-20th century, by contrast, was unusually calm: the 1950s and 1960s were marked by high levels of political bipartisanship, the results of a post-World War II "consensus" in American politics. So in some sense, today's polarization is partly a return to a more historically normal, contentious baseline after an unusually unified mid-century lull.

This is also a global phenomenon, not just American. Similar polarization trends have emerged in well-established multiparty democracies like Switzerland, Denmark and New Zealand, and in emerging economies such as Bulgaria, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Poland, suggesting broader forces (social media, economic anxiety, identity politics) at work beyond any single country's politics.

Bottom line

If you're comparing to the mid-20th century "bipartisan consensus" era, polarization today is clearly worse—more hostile, more ideologically sorted, and more resistant to compromise. If you're comparing to the most turbulent eras in American history (Civil War, Gilded Age), it's not unprecedented. What does seem genuinely new is the combination of high affective polarization (visceral dislike) with modern technology's ability to amplify and entrench those divisions through media sorting and algorithmic echo chambers—a dynamic without a clear historical parallel.