Announcing the Release of the 86th West Virginia Legislature’s (2023-2024) and the 125th South Carolina General Assembly’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 86th West Virginia Legislature and the 125th South Carolina General Assembly (2023-2024) 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 West Virginia and South Carolina 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 West Virginia and South Carolina SLES (2023–2024)
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10, top 5, 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 were generally more effective lawmakers, reflecting structural advantages such as agenda-setting power and committee leadership.
- West Virginia Findings: In terms of broader patterns, consistent with a majority-party advantage in most states, a pattern of partisan lawmaking is clearly on display in West Virginia. 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 West Virginia in 2023-24 are somewhat lower than that in the House of Delegates at 0.43, and substantially lower in the Senate at a value of 0.24. Such exclusion of minority-party members from a significant lawmaking role is not new, but stretches back to when the Democrats held firm control of the legislature. Indeed, across the legislature as a whole, since the start of our data in 1993, the minority party has had an average SLES of 0.30. These partisan differences (coupled with the very small number of Democrats in the legislature) translate into a gap in the number of laws produced by Republicans relative to Democrats. Of the 1,031 laws produced in the 2023-24 sessions, only 11 of them were sponsored by Democrats. This nearly 100:1 ratio in laws coming from Republicans to those coming from Democrats is a much starker partisan difference than seen almost anywhere else in the country.
- South Carolina Findings: In terms of broader patterns, consistent with the power of committee chairs found in most states, a pattern of chair-led lawmaking is clearly on display in South Carolina. The SLES of committee chairs across the country, on the whole, averages about 1.5, consistent with them taking about a 50% greater lawmaking role than other legislators. In South Carolina, however, chairs are even more influential, averaging an SLES in 2023-24 of 2.6 in the House and 2.0 in the Senate (the highest average that chairs in the South Carolina Senate have achieved since the start of our data in 1989). These differences translate into clear committee-leadership-driven laws, as a result. Specifically, the 13 legislators who served as chairs in the House and the 14 legislators in the Senate together combined for 110 laws from their sponsored bills in the 2023-2024 sessions. In contrast, the remaining 143 members of the General Assembly accounted for 132 laws, meaning that nearly half of all laws came from committee chairs. Whether this pattern is indicative of centralized lawmaking, in which many legislators are left out of the lawmaking process, or indicative of reliance on policy expertise cultivated in committees is worthy of further investigation.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
