Announcing the Release of the 2024-2025 Virginia General Assembly’s and the 221st New Jersey Legislature’s (2024-2025) 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 2024-2025 Virginia General Assembly and the 221st New Jersey 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 Virginia and New Jersey the Center for Effective Lawmaking has now released State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (and corresponding reports) for all 99 state legislative chambers in all 50 states, prior to the ongoing legislative sessions. We will release updated scores for these legislatures following the November 2026 elections, in spring 2027.
Highlights from the Virginia and New Jersey SLES (2024–2025)
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10 and top 5 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.
- Virginia Findings: In terms of broader patterns, interesting findings emerged both with respect to legislative seniority and regarding party influence. Due to redistricting and a large wave of retirements, the 2023 elections brought historic levels of turnover to both the House of Delegates and the Senate, with nearly a third of the Delegates and half of the Senators serving their freshmen terms in 2024-2025. Our analysis shows that those new legislators hit the ground running with remarkable success. Across the country, the average first-term lawmaker earned a State Legislative Effectiveness Score of 0.66. But in the Virginia General Assembly in 2024-2025, these newly elected members averaged 0.84 in the House and 0.83 in the Senate, coupling their new ideas with lawmaking success. In terms of party influence, the recent partisan battles over redistricting and other matters often yield the impression of significant partisan divides across the Commonwealth. In contrast, our data show that the Virginia General Assembly achieves a greater balance in lawmaking effectiveness across parties than is found in most states across the country. While the SLES of minority-party lawmakers across the country on the whole averages about 0.60, the average scores in 2024-2025 for minority-party Republicans in the Virginia House of Delegates were somewhat higher at 0.65 and in the Senate at an average value of 0.76. Such egalitarianism translates reasonably well into the number of laws produced by the parties. Near parity was achieved in the Senate, where 365 laws resulted from the bills sponsored by majority-party Democratic Senators in 2024-2025, compared to 235 laws from the bills sponsored by Republican Senators. A bit more of an imbalance occurred in the House with 271 laws from the bills of Republicans compared to 650 from majority-party Democrats. However, the overall pattern of about a third of the laws coming from minority-party Republicans is indicative that both parties were active and effective in the lawmaking process, striking a balance rarely found in states across the country.
- New Jersey 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 New Jersey. While the SLES of minority-party lawmakers across the country on the whole averages about 0.6, the average scores for minority-party Republicans in New Jersey in 2024-25 are lower than that in the Senate at 0.36 and lower still in the General Assembly at a value of 0.27. Such exclusion of minority-party members from a significant lawmaking role is not new, but stretches back more than a decade in New Jersey. Across the legislature as a whole, since the start of our data in 1996, the minority party has an average SLES of 0.43 in the New Jersey legislature, well below the national average. These partisan differences translate into a gap in the number of laws produced by Republicans relative to Democrats. Of the 514 laws produced in the 2024-25 sessions, only 19 of them were sponsored by Republicans. This approximately 25:1 ratio in laws coming from Democrats to those coming from Republicans is a much starker partisan difference than typically seen across the country, and is significantly out of proportion with the number of seats held by the parties in the legislature.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
Photo by Martin Kraft, Wikipedia
