We are a Virginia-based nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Our mission is to assist the public in navigating their state legislatures and advocating for accountability among legislators throughout the process.
This level of government has been consistently overlooked and has seen little improvement in accessibility. Our goal is to change the course of state legislatures by providing citizens with a resource that lets them easily engage with them. Through our work, we aim to unite Americans across all walks of life with a passion for state governance and a commitment to make these institutions more representative of the people they serve.
With this work, we will be able to help reduce the down-ballot turnout lag that is seen from elections at the top of the ticket down to state legislatures. Potential voters will also be able to determine the impact of their vote while reducing the cost it takes to research state legislative elections.
Election data for state legislative districts has become increasingly hard to come by (with such organizations like Daily Kos Elections no longer calculating data and Voting and Election and Science Team now requiring subscriptions for data accessibility). Our GIS experts crunch how each district has voted in each recent statewide election and every election going forward, and in the cases of redistricting how each district voted on the state legislative level under the old district lines. This data is freely accessible to the public. Our staff works with volunteer experts who want to help us on our mission to bring free, publicly accessible state legislative election data to the public.
Drawing upon our team’s eight-year track record, we forecast state legislative election outcomes by analyzing qualitative factors such as candidate media coverage and quantitative factors including election and demographic data.
Even scarcer than state legislative election data is state legislative polling, which we hope to address. We’ve established a polling team and fund to conduct public polling for statewide state legislative elections on both the chamber and district levels, asking respondents about voting intention, approval of elected officials, and issue-based questions. These polls will be accompanied by their crosstabs as well as a written summary of the poll.
By combining regularly updated state-level and national news-related content with on-the-ground statehouse reporters, we aim to create a media ecosystem that keeps you informed and engaged. We believe that by putting more information in your hands, we are all better off.
We curate state-level news each day, featuring top headlines from in-state newsrooms, focusing on state legislatures and their elections. Using RSS feeds, we pull from your favorite in-state sources for state politics and filter their work by keyword to give you their latest work on state government on our homepage. Soon, we’ll be launching state-by-state newsletters so you can get a weekly roundup of the latest in the state of your interest.
Our staff writes their own stories on state government, including breaking news, data analysis, reporting from the campaign trail, a look inside the legislative process, and more. We dig deep into the biggest stories in state government and deliver an unbiased, unfiltered layout of the talk of the town. This also reduces the cost of “C” in the equation at the top of Goal 1 by helping potential voters easily access news about their state legislatures.
In Accountability in State Legislatures, political science professor Steven Rogers notes accountability typically increases in states with more full-time statehouse reporters. In the long term, we aspire to hire more part-time and full-time statehouse reporters where they’re most needed; some states, such as California, have an abundance of these, so once we begin the process of raising the funds necessary to hire such reporters we’ll focus where the fewest are (which is where we’d focus on hiring full-time reporters versus part-time) and strengthen the backbone of our state house democracy in the process.
What wish to increase accountability in state legislatures by both shining a light on the data that is built into these institutions and centralizing it. At the moment, there is not an existing organization that lists all of this data across every state. That’s where we come in.
There is overlap between incumbents and non-incumbents alike in one field of data: money. Our campaign finance databases shine a light on who candidates are taking money from down to the state legislative level, letting the public know who is funding the candidates on their ballot. By listing the fundraising and spending habits of candidates, caucus committees, interest groups, state parties, and PACS, potential voters can easily find out who the major players in state politics are via donor analysis. Our candidate campaign finance databases are currently available, and the remaining features will be coming as early as 2026.
We’ve established comprehensive bill and roll call databases containing information on bill texts, descriptions, sponsors, impacts, and voting records. In the process, we’re enhancing public accessibility to legislative processes and incumbents’ actions.
This bill database powers a plot of the ideology of state legislators as used in Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal’s DW-Nominate, helping the public identify who in their legislature is liberal/conservative/moderate and how they compare with other members of their own legislature. The bill database uses the same methodology by Poole and Rosenthal to display how each plotted member voted on the rollcall, and what the probability was that they would have voted for or against the measure.
Voters may see a name on their ballot, but oftentimes on the state legislative level, they don’t know anything about who they’re voting for and will only use their party preference as a shortcut. We provide the public with each candidate’s website, photo, and social media so that they can learn more about who’s on their ballot. In the future, we’ll provide aggregated news on each district to keep voters informed on what state newsrooms are reporting on the candidates.
State Navigate is determined to becoming the website for state legislatures. We’ve accomplished a lot thus far, and our plans for expansion seem endless. Here’s everything we’ve achieved:
Quarter 4 2025
Wisconsin Navigate became the fourth addition to the State Navigate family on October 4th. Wisconsin is the first state to launch after the framework had been completed in Phase II to make the duplication process quick and seamless. Our priority order formula was adjusted to no longer punish states with difficult campaign finance databases, with what funding in donations and grants each state receives being the most impactful decision on where we open next. On October 18th, West Virginia became the fifth member of the State Navigate family. In Virginia, State Navigate launched a daily early vote tracker to show a comparison of the number of votes cast each day this year and on the same day in 2024 as a percentage, and began tracking early voting patterns in New Jersey. State Navigate also conducted its first-ever statewide and state legislative district polls for the November elections in Virginia, and began building the infrastructure and pages for its election night operations.
In November, State Navigate dominated election night coverage in Virginia thanks to its fine-tuned live model, The NavCast. Thanks to the NavCast, State Navigate was the first outlet to call the races for Virginia Governor and Attorney General, as well as every House of Delegates seat. State Navigate correctly predicted 96/100 seats in the Virginia House and all three statewide elections in Virginia, as well as the winner of the New Jersey Governor’s race and 74/80 seats in the New Jersey General Assembly. State Navigate had the most accurate poll of the Virginia 2025 elections amongst those that asked about all downballot races, and was the 2nd-most accurate pollster in the Virginia Governor race. After our success, we launched in Alaska on November 26th.
On December 13th, North Carolina Navigate became the seventh state our nonprofit launched in. Shortly after, we sent out a user satisfaction survey to gather feedback from our audience to help determine where we can improve our work. On December 19th, the Board of Directors expanded by four.
Quarter 1 2026
State Navigate is currently planning to launch between 4 and 12 states in Q1. Our managing editor is launching our weekly state news roundups for states we’ve opened up in, and users can now subscribe to the states of their interest to keep up with the latest. A fully integrated API powered in-part by AI will begin development so that users can freely download any original data State Navigate creates and curates, replacing the Data Downloads feature. On January 17th, 2026, State Navigate launched in Michigan, and unveiled “State Navigate 3.0,” giving State Navigate a new look and website search function.
Quarter 1
State Navigate selected South Carolina, Virginia, and Utah as our pilot states over the course of development. The work to launch these states began at the beginning of the year, with a focus on launching a “pre-alpha” version of South Carolina by the beginning of the second quarter.
Quarter 2
Thanks to the countless meetings and hours of work from our board, officers, and committee members, South Carolina Navigate launched on April 3rd, 2025. South Carolina debuted with a homepage, news aggregation features, and district summary pages, with candidate campaign finance pages to follow on May 9th. On May 24th, Virginia Navigate launched with the same content. With the primaries for various offices just a few weeks away, the site had a flurry of written analysis by our staff.
In June, State Navigate built a team and launched a fund to conduct public polling for state governments nationwide. South Carolina became the first state to have a rollcall and ideology database using W-NOMINATE. Virginia Navigate was the first of our websites to feature a live map of results down to the precinct level and race calls by our call team: State Navigate was the first outlet to call the races for Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor that night. At the end of the month, we held our first-ever fundraiser, giving ticket-goers a first look at our forecast that would come out one month later.
Quarter 3
In July, State Navigate finished hiring staff thanks to our various donors and grants. Chaz Nuttycombe became Executive Director, Jack Kersting became Development Director, Michael Foley became Elections Coordinator, Allie Geier became Managing Editor and Virginia Correspondent, and Mary Radcliffe became Data Manager. On July 28th, the Virginia forecasts were publicly released, making State Navigate the first and only organization to create a forecast for state legislatures in 2025.
In August, the last leg of South Carolina was completed, making it the first fully developed State Navigate subsidiary. South Carolina Navigate’s “Legislature” content shows profile pages for legislators, including the bills they sponsored and co-sponsored, what committees they serve on, and where they are ideologically on both the first and second dimensions of our W-NOMINATE data. Simultaneously, Utah Navigate launched with all but W-NOMINATE and Legislature content, and all of our pages became cleaner and more navigable.
In September, we made our data freely downloadable to the public after launching an API with every bit of data our organization curates and creates. W-NOMINATE in Virginia launched in the lead up to the election, letting voters cut through the noise of campaigns and learn where incumbent legislators on the ballot are ideologically before heading to the polls. Our news pages received an overhaul, combining State Navigate’s original content with the sources we pull from, organizing them by their ideological leaning so users can get both sides’ perspectives on topics of the day in state government. Virginia became the first state to have statewide election campaign finance added to its website. At the end of the month, the New Jersey Governor and General Assembly forecasts launched.
State Navigate was founded on October 26, 2023 in Virginia with three officers and three members of its Board of Directors, with Mike Mullin elected as Chair of the Board in January 2024. In June 2024, State Navigate’s staging site was launched, letting our followers know our mission and goals. At the end of 2024, CNalysis.com ceased operations and moved its content to State Navigate, a tentative development plan for State Navigate was created, and State Navigate was granted 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service.
Wondering when your state will be added? Our mission is to promote data transparency in state governance for everyone, but as a start-up, we need your help in determining where our team should look for existing interest. Check out our state selection list and see where your state comes into the plan.
State Navigate is going nationwide!
Every American deserves the right to free, accessible date on state government. That’s why our nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit is opening up in every state.
Want State Navigate to open in a state sooner?
To have a subsidiary launch in a state sooner, we need the resources to do so. Every dollar to a state moves it up over the others in priority!
