Announcing the Release of the 193rd Massachusetts General Court and the 93rd Minnesota Legislature (2023-2024) 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 193rd Massachusetts General Court (2023-2024) and the 93rd Minnesota Legislature (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 legislators sponsor, how far those bills advance through the legislative process, and the substantive significance of the proposals.
With the release of Massachusetts and Minnesota 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 Massachusetts and Minnesota SLES (2023–2024)
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10 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.
- Massachusetts Findings: In terms of broader patterns, our data show that the Massachusetts General Court is a rather egalitarian legislative body. Whereas most state legislatures across the country are organized such that majority-party members and especially majority-party committee chairs are the most effective lawmakers, such differences play a small role in Massachusetts. For example, in the 2023-24 term, committee chairs in the House averaged a SLES of 0.93, less than the overall average across all members. In the Senate, committee chairs over the entire period of our data from 2009-2024 averaged only 1.06. In contrast, committee chairs average a value of 1.53 nationwide, showing them to be more than 50% more active and effective than rank-and-file lawmakers. Egalitarianism also plays out across the parties in Massachusetts. Perhaps due to the small numbers of Republicans in the General Court, their successes may not be seen as threatening to majority-party Democrats. Whereas minority-party members across the country average an SLES of around 0.6, that average in Massachusetts across recent decades has been 0.9, almost on par with majority-party members.
- Minnesota Findings: In terms of broader patterns, it is difficult to overstate the degree to which minority-party lawmakers are shut out of the lawmaking process in Minnesota, despite nearly even number of seats across the parties. Observers of Minnesota politics have commented on the fact that the incidence of unified government, with the House, Senate, and Governor, being controlled by the same party, paved the way for the Democratic-Farm-Laborers majority successfully advancing numerous policy priorities that had been on its agenda for several years. With regards to lawmaking effectiveness, while the SLES of minority-party lawmakers across the country on the whole averages about 0.6, the scores for minority-party members in Minnesota have fallen to about a third of that, now averaging around 0.23 in the Senate and less than 0.20 in the House. These are the lowest values in the thirty years of our data. Additionally, minority-party legislative successes are mostly limited to early lawmaking stages. For example, only one of the 3,804 bills that Republicans proposed in 2023-2024 became law. In contrast, 125 bills proposed by DFLers became law. Given that Republicans held nearly half the seats in each chamber, this 125:1 ratio is significantly out of proportion with the relative seat-shares, and well beyond what is seen in nearly every other state legislature across the country. During prior periods of Republican control, there was an analogous dismissal of DFL proposals, although not quite in such an extreme proportion. Whether the parties can seek and find common ground in the current term under split control of the chambers will be of great interest.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
