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# How Congress Became More Partisan
- URL: https://ivn.us/how-the-congress-became-more-partisan/
- Published: 2012-11-02T16:00:48.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-22T19:34:45.000Z
- Author: Lucas Eaves
- Tags: News

The Congress' approval rate dropped to a historical low of 10% this year and this is mainly blamed of the extreme partisanship in Congress.

The Congress was not always that polarized, this is a recent trend when looking at the history of partisanship in Congress over the last 220 years.

The following infographic, provided by [xkcd](http://xkcd.com/?ref=ivn.us), illustrates the idea of how the more extreme part of each side of the aisle grew over the years leading to less bipartisan initiatives.

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/dc/be/dcbe1ac4-146f-43be-92a6-ea84728d86a6/content/images/2026/02/the-united-states-congress_508ed187325b3.jpg)](https://ivn.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/congress%5Flarge.png)

The legend of the timeline:

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/dc/be/dcbe1ac4-146f-43be-92a6-ea84728d86a6/content/images/2026/02/legend-png.jpg)](https://ivn.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/legend-png.jpg)