I mean, it's all relative, so it's hard to say. I was pretty young, but I remember 2000 seeming uprecedentedly nasty, especially compared to the three or four elections that came before it. I think people were really taken aback by how bitter and divisive it was, and it definitely set the stage for this very unfortunate "Red America" vs. "Blue America" dynamic we have where a conservative Republican living in an urban area who shops at the co-op for some reason feels "politically out of place" because he or she doesn't resemble other Republicans in other areas of the country in some cultural ways, for example. So, 2016 might have been nastier because things have only gotten worse with polarization, but I don't think it was more "controversial."
[/quote
Remember that 2000 election well. Clearly, that election was more partisan than previous elections but nothing to the level that the 2004-2016 elections have become. There was still a fair amount of crossover voting (for instance, Zell Miller won the U.S. Senate race in Georgia by a large margin whereas GWB took the state easily).
I agree the result of the 2000 election created such a bitterness that over the near term at least, it's hard to see a level of bipartisanship to bring this country together.
