Polarization Measures

Context

Pew Research Center has tracked partisan views of the opposing party since the mid-1990s. In 1994, fewer than one in five partisans held very unfavorable views of the other party. By 2022, that share had risen to roughly six in ten Republicans and more than half of Democrats, representing a sustained increase over nearly three decades of measurement.

The sharpest single-period increase occurred between 2008 and 2016, when very unfavorable views among Republicans nearly doubled from 32% to 58% and among Democrats rose from 37% to 55%. Both parties saw a dip in 2017 before returning to elevated levels. Surveys conducted during presidential election years have generally recorded higher levels of antipathy than those conducted in off-cycle years.

Alongside rising unfavorability, Pew has documented related shifts: growing shares of partisans who describe members of the opposing party as closed-minded, dishonest, or immoral, and increasing shares who say the opposing party's policies threaten the nation's well-being. These patterns reflect a broader trend of intensifying negative sentiment between party coalitions that extends beyond policy disagreements into personal perceptions of the other side.