In the age of Trump, Americans are becoming ever more divided. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have contributed to the growing sense of discord by targeting specific ethnic or racial groups, but they probably aren’t to blame for the larger and growing partisanship based on political identity that is tearing communities apart.

In 2016, before the election of Donald Trump, the Pew Research Center found that animosity toward those in the opposing political party had reached its highest level in almost 25 years and that for the for the first time in the study’s history, the majority of both Democrats and Republicans say they view the opposing party “very unfavorably.” Three years later, things have only gotten worse. The question is why. We can’t lay this all at the feet of divisive politicians. New analysis from The Atlantic suggests we should point our fingers back at ourselves. Working with several polling and analytics firms, The Atlantic created a ranking of U.S. counties based on partisan prejudice and found that geography (in a general sense) played some role in political animosity, specifically that political intolerance is often concentrated in urban areas. But the most politically intolerant Americans (who tend to be urbanites) also tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, and more partisan themselves. Higher education seems to be a key factor in partisanship, since people who attend graduate school appear to experience the least amount of political disagreement and therefore have less exposure and respect for anyone with conflicting ideas. When it comes to minorities, The Atlantic’s investigation confirms the somewhat counter-intuitive finding of other studies — that nonwhite people tend to be more open to opposing viewpoints because they routinely encounter political disagreement and have more diverse social networks that introduce them to a variety of opinions and more importantly, help them to associate ideas they disagree with, with people they like.

More From STAR TELEGRAM: