Charlie Cook Addresses ‘Most Divided Time’ in American Politics at State Legislators Summit

Democrats have operated like they received the voters’ mandates in 2020, when only 78,000 votes settled the presidency

Political analyst Charlie Cook told audience members at the 2022 National Conference of State Legislators Summit (NCSL) that Americans are currently experiencing the most divided time in domestic politics. We’re so divided, he said, that trying to predict politics in 2024 is “just making stuff up.”

Cook, founder of The Cook Political Report, said that the intense division is narrow and even. He explained that in the 2020 presidential election, six states came to a point and a half, or less, of deciding who won the electoral vote, and that approximately 78,000 votes settled the presidency.

Further, Cook added that only twice in the last 100 years have the margins in the House been this close.

One of the contributors to the escalating sense of division is a breeding deep distrust of the other side, Cook said. He pointed to a recent poll, which indicated that 82 percent of Republicans think that socialists have taken over the Democratic party, and 80 percent of Democrats think that racists have taken over the Republican party.

Democratic lawmakers put their arms around one another as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announces the final vote count for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the House of Representatives in Washington on June 24, 2022. The legislation, the first new gun regulations passed by Congress in more than 30 years, passed by a vote of 234-193. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Cook said, “Politics used to be stable, and then 30 years ago, it completely changed. There used to be tons and tons of conservatives who identified as Democrats and tons and tons of liberals who identified as Republicans, and it moderated the tendencies of both sides to go off. But then,

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