Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump didn't create our deep political polarization. But he now runs a country divided more deeply than ever before by our partisan differences.

According to Gallup , the 82-point partisan gap between Republican approval of the job Trump is doing (89%) and Democratic approval (7%) is the largest in the 74-year history of the poll. That gap breaks the previous record of 79 points that Trump set in his second year in office, in 2018. (Trump's first year in office, 2017, was the sixth most partisan in history.)

As I said, though: This is not a phenomenon invented by or during the Trump presidency.

The 10 most partisan years in history have all occurred in the last 16 years, as measured by Gallup. Those 10 years include years from the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as Trump.

"There have always been partisan gaps in ratings of president, just not to the degree seen over the past two decades," wrote Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones in an analysis of the data.

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