Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success
Monday, June 30, 2025
In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Co-Directors Craig VoldenAlan Wiseman (Vanderbilt University), and Faculty Affiliates Danielle Thomsen (University of California-Irvine) and Sarah Treul (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) examine the question of whether effective state lawmakers are more likely than ineffective state lawmakers to be elected to Congress. The authors draw on the CEL’s dataset of State Legislative Effectiveness Scores from 1993 to 2018 to examine the relationship between lawmaker effectiveness and the decision to run for, and ultimately be elected to, the U.S. House of Representatives. They find that more-effective state lawmakers are more likely to enter Congress. This pattern is due more to the progressive ambition of candidates than to voter decisions. Specifically, within citizen state legislatures, more-effective lawmakers are much more likely to run for U.S. House seats than are their less-effective counterparts. In highly professional state legislatures, however, more-effective lawmakers are more likely to run for Congress only when induced by an open seat. Their analysis finds no relationship between a state legislator’s lawmaking effectiveness and the likelihood that she wins her primary or general House election.
To learn more, read the full report here.
Photo: “Voting” by justgrimes is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
