Has political partisanship worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic?
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
By Jacob Alabab-Moser
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YES
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats and Republicans are more likely to be antagonistic and disagree across a range of political values.
Partisans were more likely to hold a “very unfavorable” view of the other side in 2021 than in 2000 and 2014, according to Pew Research Center. In the summer of 2020, ahead of the presidential election, Pew also found that voters' views about race, gender, and family were more polarized along party lines than they had been in 2016.
The growing divide manifests in greater party-based polarization in presidential approval ratings: Gallup reported that the Biden presidency is experiencing the largest gap in job approval among his predecessors going back to Clinton.
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