Yesterday, I announced that CNalysis would be shutting down at the end of the year so that I can pursue an endeavor I’ve been working on for the past year, with appropriate content from CNalysis being incorporated into it upon launch next January. I’ve spoken candidly with colleagues and friends, but have kept this work from the public as I typically like to work on things behind closed doors and present them to the general public when I feel that they’re representative of my efforts and I’ve got all my ducks in a row.

In 2022, I decided that I wanted to go beyond predicting state legislative elections, as it will take more than election forecasts to help heighten the profile for this level of government to the everyday American. After five years of predicting state legislative elections at the time, I noticed what felt like several holes in the accessibility of state governance. There wasn’t a website that felt like a “home” for state legislatures in the imperative facets that would help people across the country delve into the details.

A year ago, after examining my options in taking on the endeavor of creating such a website, I concluded that the best path forward would be to start up a 501(c)(3) organization and website to do this work, and to shut down CNalysis after the 2024 cycle and move appropriate content from it to the new group. As a single-member LLC, CNalysis’s business model wasn’t ideal for trying to accomplish these goals and of course, become a full-time job that can put food on the table for myself and the staff without paywalling most of our content.

So, with six months left until CNalysis shuts down, I’ll be continuing to work on the new organization: State Navigate. Today, we are launching our first website that will detail our mission, board, and officers, and give interested proponents a way to donate and subscribe to a newsletter for updates on the project. We filed our 1023 on June 14th to apply for (c)(3) status. As an organization pending nonprofit status by the IRS, donations made to it can be retroactively tax-deductible once we earn this status.

The list of goals that State Navigate has, as can be found on our website www.statenavigate.org, is extensive. To summarize, here is all we hope to accomplish, with all of them by next year besides the last bullet:

• Begin to create election forecasts for every state legislative district and chamber in the country
• Create a bill database that includes bill information and roll call voting records that will power the first-ever website that shows the ideology of state legislators using Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE package in R
• Calculate the 2024 election results for statewide elections by state legislative districts in all fifty states, and going forward provide the public with easily accessible election data
• Build a campaign finance database that lets users search every aspect of committee fundraising and spending, including lists of donors and individual contributions, with the goal of building a fifty-state system by the end of the decade
• Aggregate news on state legislatures across state and local newsrooms across the country
• Raise the money for our first poll conducted in a targeted state legislative district
• Hire statehouse reporters in every state, starting with those that need it most such as South Dakota, which has little free reporting on state legislation and few reporters

By accomplishing these goals and working with our committees, staff, and mission-aligned organizations, we’ll be able to help not just the public but journalists, interest groups, legislators, and politicos across the aisle. Our work will be free and nonpartisan, giving both parties and the public what I believe has been a chasm in the world of state legislative analysis.

I hope that our audience here at CNalysis as well as newcomers to State Navigate will be interested in helping us accomplish our mission. If you are, you can make a donation to State Navigate on our website, and for those who believe that they can provide resources that will speed up the process of making State Navigate possible, you can contact me at our website, www.statenavigate.org! Or email me at chaz@statenavigate.org.

I’m beyond excited for the future and look forward to expanding my passion for state legislatures into other facets that can serve the public. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

With Love,

Chaz