I think there are two real structural changes to how the political system is configured that have led to an increase in partisanship. First: Gerrymandering [1]

I think there are two real structural changes to how the political system is configured that have led to an increase in partisanship. First: Gerrymandering [1] - as districts have become more and more solid for either party it naturally results in candidates with a less centrist view. A couple decades ago the candidates being elected often to win voters from both sides to get elected. Now that we have many more situations where it's 80%+ party dominance in a district we get more extreme people representing us. Second: Demographic shifts in apportionment [2]. We sort of take for granted that we have a fixed number (435) of representatives spread across the states and 2 senators per state. But this wasn't always the case, originally it was 1 representative per 30,000. If we followed this through to today we'd have 10,000 representatives. This plus the growing urban vs rural divide (which was the reason we halted the growth in representatives anyway) all contribute to the greater divide. I point this out because structural issues like this are fixable in a way that throwing up our hands and saying: "politics always has been bad" does not. 1- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/07/06/a-primer-on-gerrymandering-and-political-polarization/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/07/06/a-pr... 2 - https://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/about/history.html https://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/about/histor...