It certainly doesn’t help! The underlying culture war tension (IMO) is growing out of city vs rural politics and economic issues, and the two party system naturally lends itself to splitting along those lines.

And having two parties means it’s easy to play us vs them on topics.

Almost anything can be ‘maximally polarized’ into exactly two poles with enough work though - including immigration, male/female issues, business policies, import/export policies, foreign policies (isolationist vs interventionist), etc.

Populism in general is being driven by the same factors everywhere IMO, and many of them are macroeconomic.