Announcing the Release of the 102nd Missouri General Assembly, the 131st Maine Legislature, and the 2023-2024 Kansas Legislature Legislative Sessions State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES)
The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is proud to announce the release of our State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) for the 102nd Missouri General Assembly (2023-2024), the 131st Maine Legislature (2023-2024), and the 2023-2024 Kansas Legislature legislative sessions. This initiative is part of our broader effort to measure the lawmaking effectiveness of individual legislators in all 99 state legislative chambers in the United States.
These scores capture lawmaking effectiveness by tracking the number of bills legislators sponsor, how far those bills advance through the legislative process, and the substantive significance of the proposals.
With the release of Missouri, Maine, and Kansas, our state-level data initiative continues to grow—building on earlier reports from Montana and Georgia. Additional states will be added in the coming months as we work toward full national coverage.
Highlights from the Missouri, Maine, and Kansas SLES (2023–2024)
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10, and top 5 most effective lawmakers across both parties and chambers in all three states, including legislators who have consistently ranked as highly effective lawmakers across multiple legislative sessions.
- Above Expectations: We highlight legislators who earned our prestigious Above Expectations designation for lawmaking effectiveness, including both experienced legislators with sustained records and first-term lawmakers who quickly distinguished themselves among their peers.
- Majority Party Advantage: Consistent with CEL research, majority-party legislators were generally more effective lawmakers, reflecting structural advantages such as agenda-setting power and committee leadership.
- Missouri Findings: In terms of broader patterns, although there is a majority-party advantage in most states, this advantage is strongly revealed in Missouri. While the SLES of minority-party lawmakers across the country on the whole averages about 0.6, the average scores for minority-party Democrats in Missouri are a bit lower than that in the Senate at 0.57 and substantially lower in the House of Representatives at a value of 0.30. These differences translate into a wide gap in the number of laws produced by Democrats relative to Republicans. Of the 100 laws produced in the 2023-2024 term, only 5 of them were sponsored by Democrats – all from the Senate. In the House, no bills that were sponsored by Democrats became law in 2023-2024. This shutting out of the minority party is not new. Only two bills sponsored by the Democrats in the House became law in 2021-2022, and they were shut out once again back in 2019-2020. Given that Democrats held about a third of the seats in each chamber, this nearly 20:1 ratio in laws coming from Republicans to those coming from Democrats is significantly out of proportion with the relative seat-shares, and beyond what is seen in most states across the country.
- Maine Findings: In terms of broader patterns, our data show that the Maine State Legislature achieves a much greater balance in lawmaking effectiveness across parties than is found in most states across the country. For example, in the 2023-2024 term, minority-party Republicans averaged an SLES of 0.60 in the House of Representatives and 0.87 in the Senate. Both of these values exceed the average found across all states recently, and the Senate score is the highest among minority-party Senators in Maine since the beginning of our data in the 1987-1988 term. Such egalitarianism translates partially into the number of laws produced by the parties. Although over 600 laws resulted from the bills sponsored by majority-party Democrats in 2023-2024, Republican-sponsored bills resulted in nearly 200 laws across the term, indicative that both parties were active and effective in the lawmaking process despite unified Democratic governance in the state.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
