Affective partnership means disliking people who belong to a competing party. This attitude can be defensible in certain circumstances, but it certainly poses an obstacle to regular democratic processes.

To measure it, I use the American National Election Study’s “partisan thermometer” question, which asks people to rate members of the other party from 0-10.

The graph below shows the proportions of Democrats and Republicans who rate the other party at zero. These proportions have risen rapidly and basically symmetrically, although in 2020, Republicans were somewhat more hostile to Democrats than vice-versa. (Data from 2024 are not yet available.)

The bar graph with this post adds detail about young adults from the 2020 election. That year, young Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to rate each other at zero. Democrats’ levels of affective polarization did not change with age, but older Republicans were more polarized than younger ones. Indeed, a majority of Republicans over 60 rated Democrats at zero that year, and older Republicans accounted for the difference between the parties that is evident in the line graph.

In short, if affective polarization is a problem, it is not particularly a youth problem, which means that solutions cannot depend on civic education alone.

See also: affective polarization is symmetrical; 16 colliding forces that create our moment; CIRCLE report: How Does Gen Z Really Feel about Democracy?