IS AMERICAN MORE DIVIDED THAN EVER?

Whether America is more divided than ever depends on how you define division and what period you compare it to. Many recent indicators suggest intense partisan sorting and low trust in institutions, with large gaps between Democrats and Republicans on basic facts, media sources, and perceptions of legitimacy. Surveys in the last few years also show fewer Americans believing there is common ground between the parties, and politics increasingly spilling into workplaces, schools, and family relationships.

At the same time, the phrase “than ever” is hard to verify because earlier eras had different, sometimes more extreme, forms of conflict that are not perfectly comparable. The Civil War era involved open secession and mass violence, and the 1960s and early 1970s saw widespread unrest, political assassinations, and major upheaval. Today’s divisions can look different, often expressed through online ecosystems, geographic and social sorting, and rising hostility toward political opponents rather than large-scale organized street conflict.

Another way to frame the question is to separate elite conflict from everyday life. National politics and media can appear maximally polarized, yet many local communities still cooperate pragmatically on schools, public safety, and disaster response, even while trust in national institutions erodes. Recent spikes in threats toward public officials and the rapid spread of disinformation after major events add to the sense of fragility, but they do not automatically prove society is uniquely divided compared with all past periods. The debate often comes down to whether the current mix of distrust, identity-based politics, and information fragmentation is a peak, or simply a different kind of division than earlier historical crises.