Related question. This question was previously issued conditional on Trump not being convicted. A sister question was conditioned on Trump being convicted. After Trump was not convicted, we voided the sister question and removed the condition from this question. As of the Senate's vote on conviction, the median forecasted Bipartisan Index Score for the question conditioned on Trump's conviction was 0.1244; the median forecasted Bipartisan Index Score for the question conditioned on Trump not being convicted -- this question -- was 0.0718. 

Context. On January 13, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Trump for "incitement of insurrection," setting up a trial in the Senate. If two-thirds of present Senators vote to convict President Trump, it would take only a simple majority of Senators to bar him from federal office in the future. A point of disagreement is whether a conviction would lead to a more or less divided country. Congressional bipartisanship is one measure, albeit an imperfect one, of how divided the country is.

Data and resolution details. This question resolves based on the average Bipartisan Index score of all members of the Senate during the117th Congress, which runs from January 3, 2021 through January 3, 2023. The Bipartisan Index, a joint project of the Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy, quantifies congressional members’ bipartisan behavior on the basis of bill sponsorship and co-sponsorship. The Bipartisan Index scores for this period are expected to be published in March 2023.

The graph below shows the Senate's average Bipartisan Index score over time. Notably, the average score increased during the Trump Administration. The Lugar Center has hypothesized a "Trump Effect" in which "the details of legislative work have offered Republican Senators an avenue to express subtle independence and broaden their appeal without reference to the daily media focus on President Trump."

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