Announcing the Release of the 2023-2024 Kentucky Legislative Session, 94th Arkansas General Assembly, and the 59th Oklahoma Legislature Legislative Session 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 59th Oklahoma Legislature (2023-2024), the 2023-2024 Kentucky General Assembly, and the 94th Arkansas 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 legislators sponsor, how far those bills advance through the legislative process, and the substantive significance of the proposals.
With the release of Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arkansas, 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 Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arkansas SLES (2023–2024):
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10, top 5, top 3, and most effective lawmakers across both parties and chambers in all three 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.
- Oklahoma Findings: In terms of broader patterns, Republicans maintained strong control of the Oklahoma legislature in 2023-2024, with Democrats holding only 20 of the 101 seats in the House and 8 of the 48 in the Senate. Lacking natural coalition partners on many of their proposals, Democrats in the Oklahoma legislature had a difficult time advancing their legislation, much more so than minority-party members across the country. Nationwide, minority-party lawmakers scored an average SLES of around 0.6, compared to 0.4 in the Oklahoma House and 0.3 in the Oklahoma Senate. This does not mean that Democrats were completely shut out of the lawmaking process, however. Twenty-one bills proposed by Democrats in the House and 11 from Democratic Senators became law. But the sheer number of Republicans and the success of their proposals meant that 823 of the 855 laws produced in Oklahoma in 2023-2024 were sponsored by Republicans.
- Kentucky Findings: In terms of broader patterns, our data show that the Kentucky General Assembly does a surprisingly good job of incorporating freshmen members into the lawmaking process. For the most recent term, freshmen members of the General Assembly have an average SLES of 0.84 in both the House and the Senate. This means that they are nearly as active and effective in lawmaking as their more senior colleagues. In contrast, for all other states combined, freshmen averages tend to be around 0.65. In terms of laws, the average freshman member of the House produced 2.3 laws in 2023-24, compared to 2.6 among all others. In the Senate, these averages were 3.1 for freshmen compared to 3.5 laws apiece for more senior Senators.
- Arkansas Findings: In terms of broader patterns, Republicans maintained strong control of the Arkansas General Assembly in 2023-2024, with Democrats holding only 18 of the 100 seats in the House and 6 of the 35 in the Senate. Lacking natural coalition partners on many of their proposals, Democrats in Arkansas had a difficult time advancing their legislation, much more so than minority-party members across the country. Nationwide, minority-party lawmakers scored an average SLES of around 0.6, compared to 0.46 in the Arkansas House and 0.32 in the Arkansas Senate (the lowest performance in Arkansas among minority-party Senators in our data, which stretches back to 1997). This does not mean that Democrats were completely shut out of the lawmaking process, however. Thirty-three bills proposed by Democrats in the House and 14 from Democratic Senators became law. But the sheer number of Republicans and the success of their proposals meant that 679 of the 726 laws produced in Arkansas in 2023-2024 were sponsored by Republicans.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
Photo by Mobilus In Mobili, Wikipedia.
