US House Redistricting: Ohio

[Torie]

Here is a more complete stat matrix chart, which includes comparisons with the prior CD's and the partisan trends. Obviously, the new CD's take in new territory, so the comparisons just give one a rough idea of who is doing what to whom, when. This particular Gerrymander moved a mere 35 points from the "wrong places" to the "right places."  Not bad!  

It is interesting that NW Ohio trended heavily to the Dems in 2008, which the rest of the state either trended to the GOP, or had no trend. Next door Indiana trended evenly more heavily to the Dems. It would be interesting to speculate why the partisan trend went one way on one side of the imaginary line taking in NW Ohio and Indiana, and parts of Illinois and so forth, and the other way on its other side.

[Torie]

It is interesting that NW Ohio trended heavily to the Dems in 2008, which the rest of the state either trended to the GOP, or had no trend. Next door Indiana trended evenly more heavily to the Dems. It would be interesting to speculate why the partisan trend went one way on one side of the imaginary line taking in NW Ohio and Indiana, and parts of Illinois and so forth, and the other way on the other its other side.

I think there are a few Al posts on this subject, if not a few Sam Spade ones too.

Splendid. What was Mr. Spade's opinion?  He's kind of an arrogant type, with an obscurantist streak, probably for tactical reasons, and thus no doubt well suited to be a lawyer, but sometimes his opinions amazing enough have some value. Yes, I know, Indiana is next door to Illinois' second most illustrious son in the view of some (I am not sure anyone puts Mr. Obama ahead of Lincoln yet, but give it time), but why would Obama love expand into NW Ohio, but nowhere else in Ohio (and outside Toledo in a zone that is heavily German to boot)?   I mean, it is not like it's in the same media market with any of the balance of the "love zone." In fact, Toledo, amazingly enough, has its own TV stations. Are those stations packed with talking heads who are at once Commies and persuasive or something? If so, I would like to meet this particular cohort of "reds!"  

By the way, I wonder what Mr. Spade thinks of my Ohio mappie. I take a special pleasure in how I just ignored my host of critics and skeptics, and just did it!  And I am particularly proud of my nice little geometrical shapes and color scheme.  I wonder if Mr. Spade appreciates the symmetry of the color scheme, the balance, the clarity, and the harmony of it all.  If he doesn't, he's a Philistine.

[Torie]

My guess as to why NW Ohio swung so heavily toward Obama is that I recall the unemployment rate increasing much, much more in that part of the state when the economy crashed in 2008. The NW corner of the state has a lot of industrial towns (think Elkhart, Indiana) and I remember the unemployment rate being over 15% in a lot of areas. While there are other areas of the state more impoverished, the NW was better to begin with and the economic decline was more noticeable.

Though I am a college student in Cleveland, I am orginally from NW Ohio (Erie County actually). I'd describe most of the people there as economically liberal and socially conservative. As long as things are going well, they will vote based on social issues but when hit in the pocketbook, especially when the Republicans were in charge, fiscal concerns take over and they vote for the Democrats. I think a lot of people were (and still are) struggling to make ends meet and when Obama promised change they wanted to give him a chance. Now the question is whether or not they will think he deserves a second chance.

That sounds like a most excellent analysis to me. I guess the codicil is that they are also less racist in NW Ohio than in the butternut belt (and yes fossil fuel free) so are a bit more willing to vote their pocket book as they see it (I suspect many regret their votes now). And thanks for the words about my map. It demonstrates that we have at least two aesthetes on this forum, and it is great to not be so entirely alone in that department.

[Torie]

Torie, why do you bother with land contiguity for the 9th District? Why not just use Lake Erie water contiguity to collect Toledo, Cleveland, and any precincts you want to pick up in between?

If you did that, the connection between the two parts of the 16th District would not look so bad. In addition, you probably could also add a few "pubbie points," as you so amusingly call them, by removing any less Democratic connecting precincts that you are currently including in the 9th along the shore of Lake Erie.

Water counts the same as land eh? OH-09 would just be like a series of ports along the lake, sort of like Kalingrad is to Russia. Yes, that might add about 1 pubbie point. Not too much is lost hooking up OH-09 East to OH-09 West via terra firma.

[Torie]

OH-5 is one of those places where Obama overperformed and a generic Democrat would do worse. The opposite of OH-6, in fact.

We worked this little issue to death didn't we, my friend? LOL. Pity I have not had time to push my little mappie. I have been absorbed with agriculture of late - very absorbed. And I have learned so much!  And therein lies a tale.

[Torie]

Jim Jordan's hijinks as head of the Republican Study Committee may lose him his seat.

Edit: I see this was already posted in the Ohio redistricting contest thread for some reason.

"One of the biggest thorns in Boehner’s side has been fellow Ohioan Jim Jordan, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. Earlier in the week, Republican lawmakers called for the firing of Jordan aides after it was revealed they had been coordinating an effort to “target” possible GOP “yes” votes with an outside interest group. The Columbus Dispatch reported Thursday that state legislators are working to splinter Jordan’s home turf in redistricting as retribution for his intransigence. By late Thursday night, GOP insiders were accusing Jordan of working his way into leadership meetings with rank-and-file members to disrupt their efforts to flip votes into the “yes” column."

I should probably engage in the exercise of "splintering" Jordan's CD just for kicks. It would be just such a piece of cake to do.  I could put his home in Boehner's district!  

[Torie]

Wimps!

[Torie]

Per LaTourette's marching orders, flushing one Pubbie CD and one Dem one, below is my approach. OH-05, 07, 09, 11, 12 and 15 are tentatively close to final form. The lost Pubbie CD has to be ceding Columbus to the Dems. Anything else is kind of nutter really when you think about it. And that means Stivers and Jordan will be packed together, and I am sure LaTourette will try to stack the deck in favor of Stivers (who will have to move out of his cute house in a sea of Dems in Columbus). Tiberi is not running for the Senate, so his CD now takes in the marginal Lorain County burbs, since he is used to representing suburban Pubbies (I suspect Jordan would really underperform there, so the idea of putting OH-04 in there is out). I had to split the Cuyahoga burbs between too Pubbie CD's; otherwise OH-16 gets too marginal. As it is, OH-16 is 50% McCain, which is tolerable, but it can't go lower. It just can't. The bonus is that it is a nice compact looking CD.

And with OH-07 shorn of its Dem precincts in and around Columbus, it can easily suck up Athens County, and has.

I also skipped my testosterone shot this time, and am trying to keep the Pubbie incumbents in familiar territory where I can (except Jordan), and respect where I can municipal and county boundaries. The one exception to this will be the Youngstown CD. It just has to be an erose monster.

So here is the work in progress. Any comments are welcome.



And here is the Cleveland area action:

[Torie]

Good points TJ. But back when muon2 told me that putting eastern Cleveland into OH-09 was in the cards. Of course, that may have been wrong, or wrong now, but one point in that range is critical, particularly for one untested, not all that great maybe, and with new territory. If it were LaTourette, no problem.  The Youngstown CD probably can be less erose, given the ceding of Columbus.

If Tiberi is not going into Lorain per my approach, then it is either Jordan or Latta.  What do you think of Latta there?

Are you sure about your numbers for OH-16 (it looks more Dem to me), and what are they for LaTourette's CD?  It looks like you cut a bit more deeply into Cleveland.

[Torie]

Eastern Ohio looks pretty good to me. The Pubbie pawns in the west need to be moved around, but that is just cleanup work. OH-06 was troublesome, and required a gerrymander of Jefferson County to get the McCain percentage up to where I wanted it. 

          McCain  %

OH-11  14.8%
OH-15  29.1%
Oh-09  31.9%
OH-13  33.6%
OH-14  49.1%
OH-06  50.1%
OH-16  50.3%
OH-10  54.5%

[Torie]

Well isn't that just special!  LOL.  Well either there will be two incumbents in OH-10, or Holmes County will need to be appended to OH-06 in a game of CD musical chairs, or Johnson will need to move back. Interesting. Thanks for the heads us.

And voila.  Piece of cake!  It did motivate me to change the CD numbers a bit. It does make it tough to get the Butternut area with all those Tory Dems (OH-06 now) up to totally comfortable levels, but this will have to more or less do.


         McCain  %

OH-11  14.8%
OH-15  29.1%
Oh-09  31.9%
OH-13  33.6%
OH-14  49.1%
OH-10  50.3%
OH-16  51.3%
OH-06  51.7%

[Torie]

The map below shows how the existing lines have changed. I tried to minimize the changes - for the Pubbies of course. Old OH-04 (Jordan) and OH-15 (Stivers) have merged).

So the new OH-04 has:

302,149 from Jordan's old OH-04
289,324 from Stivers' old OH-15
128,199 new territory but all in Franklin and Delaware Counties (in the Columbus media market)

So based on geography alone, and if Stivers moves, advantage Stivers. But of course, it won't be all based on geography. It needed to be set up as a reasonably fair fight, or the Tea Party might declare war, and that is not in the Pubbies' interest, so it should not, and I assume, will not, happen.

[Torie]

I really don't know why Boehner would want to play Russian Roulette by putting Jordan in his CD.  But who knows.

Jordan lives in Champaign County, not Greene. Austria lives in Greene. Johnny got confused, I guess. It is a terrible idea to do that in any event.

[Torie]

Right, I put him in Stivers' district (which was, in fact, my intention). Duh. Stupid rectangular counties.

Welcome to the Midwest! 

[Torie]

Just for fun, I explored the option of the 4th Dem CD being in the Cleveland-Akron-Canton area rather than Columbus. This iteration of the a 4th Dem CD is in white, and went 60.6% for Obama. Gorgeous isn't it?  The Pubblie flushee in this scenario would be Gibbs in Holmes county, or he would fight it out with Renassci (sp) in Medina County, or maybe Gibbs in Washington County depending on how the balance of the map works.  

I wonder if something like this is in the wind,, monstrous looking though it is (with OH-11 and OH-13 (now the Sutton CD), both having parallel tails running south to Akron (OH-11 to pick up the blacks in Akron, and OH-13 to pick up the white Dems).  There is no other way to do it. Under this scenario, OH-10 (formerly OH-13 in my previous map) would take in all of Mahoning, as well as all of much of Columbiana, Jefferson and Belmont Counties,, and that might explain why Johnson moved from Mahoning down south along the Ohio River to Washington County. Wheels within wheels.

[Torie]

Good points. I will try to remap it.

I would think that Lakewood, Parma, the small piece of Cleveland, and the rest of the Dem leaning areas in Cuyahoga would give Kucinich enough of a base to win a primary.

Northern Medina County is a place that Sutton lost in the last election, and barely won in the one before. It would be a good fit, though I figured Renacci would want as much of Medina as possible.

That would also help move Alliance or Canton out of the 16th.

Go for it boys. I look forward to seeing that CD that is cyan generically, but pink for Kuch.  It seems a bit too clever by half really.  Plus is Kuch really going to underperform that much in the new more isolationist environment out there?

[Torie]

Well a plus 2%-3% CD is not one that most Dems would win, but not Kuch, which I thought was what the gossip in that post was about. That is more like the maps we have drawn more of less no, to varying degrees? The Columbus chop could probably hold for a decade absent a GOP tank if the gerrymandering is ruthless like my map was. That gets the CD's in the chop all up to around a 5% GOP PVI. One problem with ceding Columbus is that it does not shore up the Eastern Ohio GOP CD's because of geography. The only Dem thing that can be neutralized really is Athens by doing it, which is rather thin beer.

[Torie]

Yes, Columbus has to be a quad chop. OH-04 needs to join the party, or it's a GOP bust.  OH-07 just doesn't have much in the way of excess Pubs to spread around.  OH-07 sucked up but two additionally heavily Dem wards in Columbus (about a dozen precincts) when I did my map, and it was done. It was maxed out.

So I don't expect to see that - a tri-chop - at all. OH-04 has a lot of excess Pubs, and can be drawn in its northern reaches to have even more.

[Torie]

But if you're going to do that, why stop at D+1? Why not just make it R+3 so that you should win it no matter who the Democrat is? R+3 really isn't any harder to draw and you don't start getting into trouble until R+4.

And yes, I would assume that the western part of Cuyahoga County is slowly trending in the GOP's directon.

Mostly ugliness of the lines. You can condense the Democrats to 3 districts in Northern Ohio with very Torie-like juts, but if they don't do that you are slightly constrained.

TJ's map gets rid of the gross erosiites at a cost of only a couple of Pubbie points.  At least that is what he says, and I accept his representations. He's thinking of his map when he uses that plus 2%-3% Pubbie PVI number for the eastern/southern Cuyahoga/Lorain etc. CD.

[Torie]

But if you're going to do that, why stop at D+1? Why not just make it R+3 so that you should win it no matter who the Democrat is? R+3 really isn't any harder to draw and you don't start getting into trouble until R+4.

And yes, I would assume that the western part of Cuyahoga County is slowly trending in the GOP's directon.

Mostly ugliness of the lines. You can condense the Democrats to 3 districts in Northern Ohio with very Torie-like juts, but if they don't do that you are slightly constrained.

I would think it's more that you can save the extra R points for the other NE Ohio GOP districts.  The more D you allow CD10 to be (by moving it farther into west Cleveland), the more Dems in other places (eastern Cleveland suburbs, Akron area, etc) you can stuff into Fudge and Ryan, which benefits LaTourette, Renacci, Johnson.  Making a full-blown 13-3 is tougher than a 12-3-Kucinich swing. 

Mostly Renacci by a percentage point or two, and maybe 50-75 basis points for LaTourette. The impact on Gibbs and Johnson would be minimal. The erosity of the Youngstown CD has more to do with the prospects of the latter two.

[Torie]

What do you all think of this little effort? Doesn't it look just so fair and reasonable and all?  And surely Kuch can win the Dem primary here no?  OH-10 was carried by Obama by 7%, 52.8 to 45.8. It's PVI is about dead even.  I also include an income map of Cleveland from 2000.








 

[Torie]

However, making OH-10 beautiful jams OH-14, and it becomes defaced a bit. And so it goes.

[Torie]

What are the stats on that OH-14, Torie?  Might it be worth it to push OH-10 a little farther west (eg, taking all of rural Lorain other than Oberlin) so that OH-14 can grab redder territory, even if this means OH-11 snakes down to Akron via a less optimal route?  (After all, LaTourette is the GOP's point man on this issue.)  

49.4% McCain, 49% Obama in OH-14;  GOP PVI +3.8%  The numbers for OH-14 are like the speed of light. They stay the same no matter what you do. In my earlier map it was GOP PVI +4.0% (and that was when I ignored municipal lines for CD's that I wanted to bump up the GOP numbers, as opposed to this iteration.  The only really juicy slug of GOP precincts in the vicinity is in North Canton, and one can't get there. Moving west in Cuyahoga is a sea of deep blue, except on the wrong side of the Maginot line created by OH-11's trip to black Akron on the south end (and those are somewhat marginal), and in Summit County - again on the wrong side of the Maginot line. That might be worth about 25 basis points in any event - max.

I drew OH-16 and OH-06. Both are 52.3% McCain, for a GOP PVI of +7.2% each.  That represents the dividend for making OH-10 a swing CD which is supposedly Kuch Dem primary friendly. OH-10 could be made about a point more GOP by cutting back OH-11's reach in Akron in exchange for eating up some 65% Obama precincts in west Cleveland, but those precincts are mostly white and per the alleged plan, I assume are needed to help Kuch win his primary. So thus its lines, which lines also push up the GOP numbers in OH-16 a bit since OH-13 can suck up more Dem precincts in Summit County.

Gibbs and Renasci (sp) are in the same CD now (OH-16), and will fight it out. Or Gibbs can move from Holmes County into OH-06 and try his luck there. He's probably done, unless he has substantially superior political talents to  Renasci or Johnson. OH-16 is mostly new territory for him, and primarily suburban, a demographic with which Gibbs would not be familiar representing.



By the way, in this iteration, OH-07 is probably going to have to lose the two black wards in Columbus it sucked up in my initial map (it already had a bit of heavily Dem territory in Columbus and a couple of small suburbs in Franklin County which it will keep), so that OH-07 can suck up Athens County. OH-12 will take up those precincts, but in exchange be shoved a bit east from my earlier map to pick up some heavily GOP precincts in the balance of Ashland County, and about half of Wayne County. At least that is what is in my mind's eye. Some of the western Ohio CD's other than OH-09  move east since OH-09 is moving west from my first map since it is being bounced from Cuyahoga County and a bit  of Lorain over which it traveled to get to Cuyahoga.

[Torie]

What is the black VAP percentage in OH-11 TJ?  I don't think the Pubbies are willing to risk litigation by virtue of it being less than 50%. 

[Torie]

47.0%VAP (49.6% overall if that matters any) and I'm not sure they'd do this, especially without consulting the local NAACP and Marcia Fudge. I do think Fudge would have no problems in a primary though, the white population is split up too much between east and west for it to matter.

I've mainly been operating under the assumption of a Cleveland-to-Akron OH-11, but wanted to see what it would look like if they don't draw it. Do you think a court would mandate it? It doesn't change the results much just makes it uglier. The local GOP will need to talk to Fudge and George Forbes (the local NAACP leader) first in any event. Keeping them happy is essential.

If I had to guess, I would say that the odds are about 50-50 that a lower court might toss a map that did not hit the 50% figure. If it got to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS might well deny cert, the odds are about 1 in 3 that such a map would be tossed. The odds are better before SCOTUS that dropping below 50% might be upheld because SCOTUS is making noises that they are getting tired of the VRA and aggressive interpretations of it.

But we won't know, because the Pubbies are not going there. It is just too risky, without much political gain.