Announcing the Release of the 67th Wyoming Legislature’s (2023-2024) and the 33rd Alaska Legislature’s (2023-2024) 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 67th Wyoming Legislature and the 33rd Alaska 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 that legislators sponsor, how far those bills advance through the legislative process, and the substantive significance of the proposals.
With the release of Wyoming and Alaska 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 Wyoming and Alaska SLES (2023–2024)
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10, top 5, top 3, and most effective lawmakers across both parties and chambers in both 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, and in the case of Alaska, majority-cross-party-coalition members, were generally more effective lawmakers, reflecting structural advantages such as agenda-setting power and committee leadership.
- Alaska Findings: In terms of broader patterns, the cross-party majority caucus coalitions in the Alaska Legislature noted above are unique in comparison to other states. Following the 2022 elections, which took place under the new ranked-choice voting and open primary system, there were substantial cross-party governing coalitions in both chambers, but most notably in the Senate. Analysis of the State Legislative Effectiveness Scores in turn demonstrates that the lawmaking patterns in both chambers were somewhat more egalitarian than we had seen in the past. For example, in the House, the SLES among those Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who were in the minority caucus averaged a value of 0.67. This is higher than the 0.60 average across all states, and notably above the 0.52 average for minority caucus members from prior terms that we scored (going back to 1993). In the Senate, the majority coalition, containing sizable memberships of both parties, harkened back to the Senate coalitions from 2007-2012. The 2023-2024 Senate also exhibited a degree of egalitarianism, as captured by a lower overall variance in Senate SLES Scores than had been seen in decades, and notably present in the highest Score among all Senators being 2.39 (by Senator James Kaufman), a lower top performance than had been seen in decades. In combination, these indicators in both chambers suggest that lawmaking influence was spread broadly in the Alaska state legislature in 2023-2024, indicative that good policy ideas are coming from legislators across parties and across the state on the whole, rather than clustered in a single party or among a few top performers.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
Photo by Jamesmartin111, Wikipedia
