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How significant is it though? Most elections since 2000 have been pretty close, so saying that it’s somehow significant that Trump barely beat Hillary, when either party can get 45% in polls just for a block of wood baring their label.
I suspect it’s down to big data managing to dig deeply enough to predict and identify potential voters and messaging good enough to attract those likely red or blue voters with targeted advertising. The era of broad-based appeal ended with social media data mining and targeted messaging.
I say the 2016 election was different in that a) the 2000 and 2004 elections were between candidates who had roughly equal charisma (well, lack of it, really) and institutional backing b) the 2008 and 2012 elections were largely decided by the GOP candidates being cucky, plus also lacking institutional backing.
The 2008 election was determined by 1)the economy; and 2) the fact that the incumbent party had been in power for two terms. There was essentially no chance of the Republican candidate winning in 2008.
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Polarization is sufficient to explain this. There were a lot of Democrats who were utterly unenthused about Hillary Clinton (especially after the primaries) but held their noses to vote for her; likewise I know Republicans who voted for Trump despite disparaging him beforehand and drinking to dull the pain afterward. Many of them would have done so even if their other party had managed to put up a good opponent, because negative views of the opposing party as a whole just kept going up. (Is there any much more recent data than that 2014 Pew report? A quick hunt isn't finding me anything post-2016.)
Does that explain the data? Those Pew graphs do seem to roughly show Democrats' polarization rising from the late 90s and Republicans from the early 2000s, which I guess is right around when I'd guess a significant fraction of Democrats and Republicans started getting their news from the internet. (at which point, who needs Big Data? people like to bubble themselves among sources they already agree with...) There are so many possible explanations, though, I think I'd need more than one piece of very rough evidence.
Polarización exists because the elites can better tailor their messages to appeal to one or the other ideology and since the advent of Cable have been able to do so in ways that effectively keep their own constituents from being contaminated even accidentally by opposing news or viewpoints. The Left uses sources like Vox, MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times to become informed. The Right uses FOX, Breitbart, OANN, and talk radio. The logic is much like a drug dealer. Hook people on condensed versions of their political opinions, crank up the potency, and have a voter for life. Plus, it allows for targeted advertising not only of candidates (the right candidates won’t buy time on CNN where very few of the right leaning voters get their news) but of organizations and products (for example Black Rifle Coffee as a “conservative coffee” meant to be a replacement for Starbucks).
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