In 2016, 47% of Republicans said Democrats were more immoral than other Americans. By 2022, that number was 72%.
On the other side, 35% of Democrats said the same about Republicans in 2016. By 2022, it was 63%.
Those figures come from a Pew Research Center survey of 6,174 adults conducted June 27 to July 4, 2022. In six years, calling your fellow citizens immoral went from a minority view in both parties to the majority view in both parties. Pew’s report on partisan hostility documents the shift.
This is the lens of the Moral Decay Index that most people misread. Political polarization is not the problem. Disagreement is healthy. A free country is supposed to argue about taxes, borders, abortion, guns and war. The problem is what happened to the way we disagree. We stopped seeing opponents as wrong and started seeing them as bad.
The numbers behind the contempt
Pew’s 2022 data does not stop at “immoral.” Seventy-two percent of Republicans called Democrats dishonest, and 64% of Democrats said the same of Republicans. Sixty-two percent of Republicans held a very unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, and 54% of Democrats held a very unfavorable view of the GOP. In 1994, fewer than a quarter of either party felt that way.
That is the curve that should worry you. Not that Americans disagree more, but that the share who view the other side with intense hostility has more than doubled across a generation.
And here is the twist: Americans are not happy about it. The same survey found 27% of the public viewed both parties unfavorably, up from just 6% in 1994. Thirty-nine percent said they often wish there were more political parties to choose from, including 47% of adults under 50 and 48% of independents. Millions of people feel trapped in a fight they did not choose, between two teams they do not like.
We are fighting people who mostly do not exist
The most important research on this subject is not about what Americans believe. It is about what they think the other side believes.
In a 2019 study of 2,100 Americans conducted with YouGov, the nonprofit More in Common found that Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their opponents hold views they consider extreme as actually do. They called it the Perception Gap. The Perception Gap study walks through the issue-by-issue results.
The details are brutal for anyone who thinks being informed makes you fair-minded:
- People who read the news “most of the time” had perception gaps nearly three times larger than those who read it “only now and then.”
- The politically disengaged were about three times more accurate about the other side than the most committed partisans.
- Among Democrats, those with postgraduate degrees were three times less accurate than those who had not finished high school.
- People who posted political content on social media had an average gap of 29 points, compared with 18 for those who did not.
Read that again. The people most confident they understand the other side are the people most wrong about it. The more partisan media you consume, the more distorted your picture of your neighbor becomes. We are not at war with the other half of the country. We are at war with a cartoon of it that someone sold us.
Where contempt leads
Contempt is not harmless. Once you decide your opponent is immoral, almost anything done to stop them starts to look justified.
In a survey of 5,735 adults conducted November 21 to December 8, 2025, PRRI found that 20% of Americans agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That included 19% of Republicans, 17% of Democrats and 19% of independents. PRRI’s January 2026 report has the full breakdown.
One in five. Notice something else: the figure is nearly identical across parties. Whatever each side tells itself about who the dangerous ones are, the appetite for political violence is not a one-party disease.
The good news is that 77% disagreed, and Americans have a clear idea of what is feeding the problem. Asked about contributors to political violence, 67% pointed to political leaders who fail to condemn violent rhetoric from their own followers. Sixty-four percent cited AI-generated false or misleading information. Fifty-three percent cited harsh and violent political language. The public, in other words, has diagnosed the illness correctly. The people with microphones are not listening.
The double standard is the rot
This is where the Moral Decay Index draws the line. Principle that changes depending on who benefits is not principle. It is tribal loyalty wearing a suit.
You see it every news cycle. Corruption is an outrage when the other party does it and a “distraction” when yours does. Lying is disqualifying for their candidate and “just politics” for yours. Violence is terrorism when it comes from them and “understandable frustration” when it comes from us. Every time that switch flips, the standard dies a little.
Here is a test anyone can run. Take the next political scandal that makes you angry. Describe what happened without naming the party or the person. Write down the rule you think was broken. Then imagine the exact same conduct by someone on your own side. If your verdict changes, you have found the problem, and it is not in Washington.
Firm without contempt
None of this means going soft. You can condemn a policy with everything you have. You can fight an official at the ballot box, in court and in the press. You can call a lie a lie. Accountability and contempt are not the same thing, and confusing them is how we got here.
The difference is simple. Accountability targets conduct: what someone did, what the evidence shows, what the rule requires. Contempt targets people: who they are, what group they belong to, what kind of human they must be to disagree with you. Accountability can be answered with evidence. Contempt cannot be answered at all.
A few practices make the difference real:
- Argue with what people actually believe. Before you respond, ask what they mean. The Perception Gap research says you are probably wrong about it.
- Cut your dose of outrage media. The data says the heaviest news consumers have the most distorted view of opponents. Read primary sources instead of commentary about them.
- Hold your own side first. Condemn bad conduct from allies loudly and early. It is the only criticism that costs you anything, which is exactly why it carries weight.
- Refuse the language of vermin and enemies. Once a group of fellow citizens becomes subhuman in your vocabulary, it gets easier to treat them that way.
The verdict
Americans did not wake up one day hating each other. They were taught to, a little at a time, by leaders, media and algorithms that profit from the fight. The survey evidence shows the hostility grew fast, rests on a badly distorted picture of the other side, and now sits alongside a disturbing minority willing to entertain violence.
It also shows most Americans are tired of it. That exhaustion is an opening. The first step out does not require a new law or a new party. It requires you to hold one standard, for everyone, starting with the people on your own team.
Sources
- Pew Research Center, “As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System,” August 9, 2022
- More in Common, “The Perception Gap,” 2019 (with YouGov)
- PRRI, “Political Violence in America: Public Perceptions, Polarization, and Accountability,” January 16, 2026
If this made you angry, good. Now turn it inward. The Moral Consistency Journal is a 30-day audit of the places where your own standards bend. More Case Files and data breakdowns live at themoraldecayindex.com. Books that go deeper are in our Bookshop.org store, which supports independent bookstores.