Ohio redistricting thread

[lfromnj]

Also wow Ohio redistricting for legislative maps have some of the most dumbass County split rules possible. The congressional ones are one with mostly just keep counties whole and no double crosses but Jesus christ the legislative ones are awful.

[lfromnj]

Is it even legally possible to make a 54 R 46 D state house?

[lfromnj]

Is it even legally possible to make a 54 R 46 D state house?

Probably not, but we'll figure out how close is realistically possible in the coming weeks.

It's really hard, especially given County rules. You'd have to make a lot of Dem favoring decisions to just get 40 Biden seats many of which would be narrow. Most of the strategic lien drawing would likely have to be in the Greater Cleveland area and to basically deny Rs as many seats as possible in the region. (It's harder to play around especially with Columbus because it's basically perfectly encapsulated in Franklin County.

This is why trying to get a directly proportional delegation, especially when it comes to state House, is never a good idea. The majority party should always win a disproportionate amount of seats because more of their opponents votes should be wasted in areas won by the majority if that makes sense.

The map has 37 Dem leaning seats and I think 38 Biden seats. Fun fact one of the Biden seats is actually a Renacci seat !(Eastern Hamilton County). That one is an interesting one.

[lfromnj]

Great news.

[QuoteFromLink]However, the Ohio House map adopted by the commission favored Republicans with 67 seats to 32 Democratic seats, and the Ohio Senate map favored Republicans with 23 seats to 10 Democratic seats.

I would be interested in seeing that map...curious how much of it is natural geography vs. crazy lines.
[/quote]


Iowa has 61 Trump seats with a very similar margin FYI.

[lfromnj]

So much for Republican gerrymandering. But Dems getting >80% of the districts in Illinois is totally fine. Makes sense.

Don't know whats the point of mentioning Illinois. I guess one could mention the legislative maps which are obviously illegal but the IL congressional maps are perfectly legal until you use PAs standard.

A better comparison would be Oregon however which has similar statute language to Ohio.

[lfromnj]

Well done.

I mean that general geographic alignment of the districts has basically been the online and activist consensus for a while now, it's no surprise the court wants something like it. I seen the map with various alterations at the margins probably more than 20 times. Here's my third and most recent version - note that it features a barely  Trump Toledo seat rather than a barely Biden one, cause I wanted to put Erie inside the Cleveland grouping.

Lakewood is more dense than Cleveland itself. It clearly belongs with Cleveland. Its an old historical suburb that has also been facing declining population as long as Cleveland.. Placing the far south of Cuyahoga before Lakewood is pretty similar to what the GOP did in Cinci although not as bad.

[lfromnj]

Well done.

I mean that general geographic alignment of the districts has basically been the online and activist consensus for a while now, it's no surprise the court wants something like it. I seen the map with various alterations at the margins probably more than 20 times. Here's my third and most recent version - note that it features a barely  Trump Toledo seat rather than a barely Biden one, cause I wanted to put Erie inside the Cleveland grouping.

Lakewood is more dense than Cleveland itself. It clearly belongs with Cleveland. Placing the far south of Cuyahoga before Lakewood is pretty similar to what the GOP did in Cinci although not as bad.

You can argue that stuff all you want, but since the imposed standard is now partisan fairness, sinking a community Biden won by 50 points with the Cleveland seat is no longer going to cut it when it can be used to help facilitate a new swing seat. So you now want to put GOP areas with Cleveland before Dem ones.

If partisan fairness is a standard then the Dayton Springfield district is unneccesary. You made the median seat Trump +3 instead of +8 with a more logical Dayton seat based with it taking in Northern Warren/Troy.

If competiveness is a standard Akron doesn't need to take in Shaker heights.

There doesn't seem to be any standard for your map

It's not  even Lakewood is what makes it swing, you can still keep it as a Trump +2 swing district in your format by taking the more logical areas rather than obviously forcing what is effectively a neighborhood of Cleveland into the seat. If one is doing a Lorain-Cuyahoga 2 district set up then yes it would be a East-West split but you clearly had space to put Lakewood into the Cleveland district.

[lfromnj]

Would something like this get Dem votes on the commission?

illegal, can't have that double cross in Columbus. Also one whole county in each district or entirely within 1 district so the Cuyahoga Akron district is a no go.

[lfromnj]

I don't normally visit this board, but I'm stopping in to say that I was genuinely thrilled by this SC decision. Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin should go on the chopping block next.

One of these is not like the rest.

[lfromnj]

I don't normally visit this board, but I'm stopping in to say that I was genuinely thrilled by this SC decision. Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin should go on the chopping block next.

One of these is not like the rest.

Wisconsin might not be as bad as the others, but its partisan breakdown is ridiculously disproportionate.

Its currently 5r 3d. It will probably end up at 6r 2d but that isn't due to any gerrymandering. Infact gerrymandering kinda makes it less likely it is 6r 2d.  The shape of wi03 is certainly ridiculous and wi01 could be cleaned up in one direction or the other(it should either have Rock County or be more Milwaukee based instead of doing both)

[lfromnj]

I don't normally visit this board, but I'm stopping in to say that I was genuinely thrilled by this SC decision. Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin should go on the chopping block next.

One of these is not like the rest.

Wisconsin might not be as bad as the others, but its partisan breakdown is ridiculously disproportionate.

Its currently 5r 3d. It will probably end up at 6r 2d but that isn't due to any gerrymandering. Infact gerrymandering kinda makes it less likely it is 6r 2d.  The shape of wi03 is certainly ridiculous and wi01 could be cleaned up in one direction or the other(it should either have Rock County or be more Milwaukee based instead of doing both)

When you analyze district fairness, do you focus on matching the partisan results to the composition of the electorate or do you focus on keeping the districts geographically compact?

At that point why not just have the judges mandate PR?

Under what law would Wisconsin's congressional districts be illegal? Elections are certainly free. Is there some minor fixing that would be nice? Sure but it would be minor . Would it also arguably be nice to change the 2 NE districts to reflect the urbanization patterns of the Fox River? Yes although historically the Fox River Valley has been split so a judge mandating that district would certainly be unusual.

The maps could certainly better although the most major thing I would change would actually make the map less compact.

[lfromnj]

Its just ugly because you need to gerrymander to get rid of a 4D 3 R state house split in Hamilton.  That draws its self naturally. 3 Cinci seats + 1 Dem in the north. 2 R seats in the west along with a Biden Eastern seat that still voted for Renacci in 2018 so I consider it an R seat. They made it 5D 2 R but didn't sacrifice the senate seat because Hamilton naturally lends itself it a Western and North seat instead of a Eastern and North seat. Making a Eastern and Northern seat forces a stupid seat regarding the West instead of just placing the Eastern 1/7 of Hamilton with Warren/Clermont.

[lfromnj]

https://redistricting.ohio.gov/meetings

Seems like the GOP is just drawing a bunch of Tilt D Trump seats.

https://redistricting.ohio.gov/assets/organizations/redistricting-commission/cuyahoga-summit-and-geauga-counties.pdf

all 15 seats in the Cleveland area are D leaning but 6 of them are literally 50 to 51% in the composite.



Also a classic case of Fair maps from Democrats.

[lfromnj]

In defense Summit County Ohio naturally lends itself to that. After drawing a black influence seat in Akron the rest of the county is 50/50.

 

This seems to be the natural layout of Summit. One Black seat in Akron. One white Akron seat + Cuyahoga falls which seems to be the suburb that sorta juts into Akron. After that one working class southern seat that is R for Trump and composite heavily and one more upscale middle-northern seat that voted for Biden but is R on the composite. Finally the northern Twinsburg area strip which definetely seems more related to Cleveland anyway. It seems the GOP just made all 3 seats into tossups more or less.

It strictly follows proportionality and after that it makes 2 dem seats 1 tossup and 1 r seat into 1 d seats and 3 tossups. It isn't a case of making tossups from dem seats. Its just making 3 tossups where each party has to give up their safe seat. Its different from say Dayton where there would be one Likely D and one Safe R but they still keep the Safe R while making the Likely D a tossup.

[lfromnj]

Why is Dublin still attached to Union County?

Some county has to be attached to get to 4 senate districts worth of pop. Infact 2 really have to be attached for closer to equal pop.

[lfromnj]

Why is Dublin still attached to Union County?

There are quite a few rich Republican donors there who probably don’t want to be represented by a Democrat.

And these don’t exist in other towns in Franklin County?

Also, why would Democrats draw that same seat?

There are arguably more in Dublin than anywhere else in Franklin County

Well I don’t think Democrats care about what Republican donors think. I think what maters to them is that Dublin is pretty Democratic and shouldn’t be tacked onto red rurals.

The reason Democrats are fine with it is because Dublin has recently become heavily Democratic and can give us a shot at winning a seat we otherwise might not even with some rurals attached.

Theres literally no way thats flipping till 2026 if not 2030.

Still a double digit Trump seat.

[lfromnj]

Why is Dublin still attached to Union County?

There are quite a few rich Republican donors there who probably don’t want to be represented by a Democrat.

And these don’t exist in other towns in Franklin County?

Also, why would Democrats draw that same seat?

There are arguably more in Dublin than anywhere else in Franklin County

Well I don’t think Democrats care about what Republican donors think. I think what maters to them is that Dublin is pretty Democratic and shouldn’t be tacked onto red rurals.

The reason Democrats are fine with it is because Dublin has recently become heavily Democratic and can give us a shot at winning a seat we otherwise might not even with some rurals attached.

Theres literally no way thats flipping till 2026 if not 2030.

Still a double digit Trump seat.

The State Senate seat, I mean.  A southern Franklin County sans Columbus + Pickaway seat would be a heavier lift.

It could just be constitutional and the requirements for Kunze to retain the majority of her district.

[lfromnj]

It seems like what Republicans really want is to lock in a guaranteed supermajority in the legislature. In Ohio, that's a 3/5 majority (so, 60 in the House and 20 in the Senate). Obviously, DeWine is likely a lock for reelection. While he's obviously more conservative than Kasich, he's still irritated the right-wing fanatics in the legislature quite a few times. That same veto threshold is also the minimum needed to refer constitutional amendments to the ballot.

Also, is nesting really required? I've never really understood the point. To me, it just seems to exacerbate the unnecessary redundancy of bicameral state legislatures.

The Dem proposal doesn't help dewine, all it does is draw out moderate Republicans allies in Franklin/Cuyahoga county.

Nesting honestly is fine IMO, it actually does give a purpose where it perhaps allows 1 state senator to coordinate with their 3 state reps on projects or the like. It also arguably does limit gerrymandering to some degree. Ohio has other issues like very specific county split rules that really mess up NE ohio. The rules outside of northeast Ohio are fine and don't matter too much other than pissing Democrats off in Cincinatti as it more or less prevents them from getting 2 seats there in any fair map. There are also certain "incumbency protection" rules embedded in the state constitution but they don't really protect incumbents but instead just give retiring incumbents some rules on their districts.

[lfromnj]

We are now at the stage were Ohio Republicans are basically saying the State Supreme Court is wrong.

https://twitter.com/AndrewJTobias/status/1485011865386172417?s=20

placing downtown Columbus with Pickaway county

Either Pickaway or Union County has to be paired with Franklin County and neither of those counties is really a great fit with most parts of Franklin.  Under either of those pairings the best the GOP can hope for is an R leaning seat in 2022 that likely wouldn't last more than one cycle.

False, you can get closer to population equality by adding Madison as well. If you have Pickaway Madison and Grove city that would not flip all decade. The map is arguably  D friendly for Franklin because the Franklin cluster is underpopulated by a few dozen thousand . This is obviously because Kunze doesn't want working class exurban areas or maybe there's an R senator from Madison.
The Ohio GOP now can accordingly redraw . Pickaway +Franklin is 50k under deviation for 4 districts while Madison+ Pickaway +Franklin is only 1k under deviation.



This would be a pretty Safe R working class part of Columbus and exurban/rural areas in the South. The area of Columbus west of downtown actually seems to be trending R as well by the way.
+15.7 Trump in 2016, +15.9 Trump in 2020. More D friendly downballot relatively than the current district but still more R overall. I think Obama may have won it in 2012 narrowly funnily enough so its closer to Canton than North Columbus.

Kunze would have been term limited anyway in 2024 and Democrats could have possibly picked then . However they wanted a Safe D seat instead of an underpopulated swing seat.

There's a GOP Senator living in Madison and I believe the redistricting rules say a reasonable effort needs to be made to keep him in something resembling his current district since he won't be up for election in 2022.  Madison is currently drawn with Clark & Greene and that combo still falls within the acceptable population deviation so it's extremely unlikely that Madison will be removed from its current district to balance the population of another district.  Kunze also has to be kept reasonably within her district since she isn't up for re-election in 2022 either.

With that being said we arrive back where we started.  However, I suppose there is one other alternative which is to pair Franklin with Fairfield but that would push all 4 Franklin based districts almost to the max deviation over the ideal district size and Fairfield really needs to stay with the Southeast districts since they are all underpopulated already.

Lol the GOP might be right I think. The map keeps Madison in a district with Franklin thereby violating the constitution.

[lfromnj]

Surprised they didn't split Youngstown and drawn the swingiest possible seat in Athens. Both of those seem relative freebies for a D seat.



Anyway did some more looking into Hamilton. Basically IMO a fair map for the state house would have 3 super Safe D Cincinatti seats. 2 black seats and 1 white. After that a northern Safe D seat with a mix of upscale/diversifying areas. Generally votes with the county as a whole so Strickland still lost it in 2016.

Then 1 safe R western seat and 1 tossup by Biden #s western + black suburb seat. Lastly a Biden Renacci seat in the East. So 6 Biden seats but according to the Ohio state constitution only 4 D seats. So what does the GOP do here?

Well the Eastern seat can't get much more Republican. It can only be like Trump +1 to 2. However the western seat can definetely be more R. So the deal is to gerrymander the Eastern seat into Safe D while making the Western seat into Safe R. In this case we now have 5 D seats.

Map shown above is my fair map of the county. Map is definetely a bit weird in downtown Cincinatti I admit .

[lfromnj]

OH state house if it was as large as the state house of neighboring PA.
73 Biden districts.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/ada4e0c7-41c3-4942-a957-d6f0250f573c

Was reading through the thread. The media should really realize details like this.(using more seats is a decent idea to show where the final maps would end up near as its harder to do too much to the maps with more seats especially if one keeps adhering to stuff like city/county splits. Only weird thing I see is putting the far south of Franklin with downtown Columbus effectively cracking that area. So 72/203 is 35.4% or 36 seats if translated to the state house. It's definetely possible to shoot for some measure of proportionality(say go from 36 D seats to 41 or 42 Biden seats) from there but PR is merely 1 out of many factors and even if one wants to view it as strict then D+0.1 seats should be viewed as a D seat.

[lfromnj]

What is this incarnation of maps going for in terms of partisan balance? It's doesn't seem like the OH Supreme Court has much tolerance for the commission or legislature playing games.

42 d seats with 14 of them being 50 to 51 d. In some cases a gop gerrymander in others its a competivemander such as with Summit county. Others such as Hamilton is the GOP agreeing to cede a seat they would otherwise win but shore up another shaky seat.

[lfromnj]

The Dem proposal doesn't help dewine, all it does is draw out moderate Republicans allies in Franklin/Cuyahoga county.

The state House seems to be more problematic on that note. However, Republicans currently have a massive 25-8 majority in the state Senate. It seems likely if there's a proportionally fair map for the state Senate that an 18R-15D map would be quite useful for DeWine. Even if Republicans got back up to 20 on that map, they'd need to hold their entire caucus together.

Commission has adopted the Republican plan on a 5-2 vote. The map will last four years, instead of ten.

For the legislature or the Congressional map? Also, what are the partisan leans of said approved map(s)?

Slightly Seperate topic but one reason why the senate GOP advantage is so massive is because the Franklin delegation just completely fell apart for the GOP In the state house bar one seat while the GOP still has 1 state senate seat wholly within Franklin and another third with Deleware.  That along with the other side with the most extreme trends near Youngstown/Warren still having 2 state house Democrats but both senate seats flipping to the GOP. The last part obviously also can't be attributed to any gerrymandering as we are talking about an area that swung 40 points right.

[lfromnj]

It is kind of funny how despite Cleveland being perfectly fit for one senate district everyone wants to split it. (Well it is 4.9% above population once you add Beachwood as well but the entire region has to have overpopulated districts anyway). Democrats obviously want to split it because they want 4 Safe seats from the county. Republicans actually need to keep it split because otherwise the western Cuyahoga seat which is R held will need to take in Lakewood moving that from single digit to double digit Biden.  



Geographically my configuration is more similar to the GOP map but putting Lakewood in the Western seat moves it to Biden +12. Perhaps winnable for the GOP as Rs  easily hold a Biden +8 seat currently but it also isn't as R downballot due to the inclusion of Lakewood/Parma. After that there has to be weird leftover Geagua, Northern Summit and rest of Cuyahoga seat which is narrowly Trump in my map.

Its really amazing how one of the "non partisan map" split Cleveland 4 ways. The actual fair option is just keep it whole because it clearly is a decent district and keeping it whole has advantages and disadvantages for each party. It fits well with any VRA concerns as the city is plurality AA and the Eastern seat would also almost be majority black.

More than anything else for legislative redistricting  even if one wanted to replace the system the most important Ohio Democrats would need is to replace the 3/5 veto override with 2/3. 3/5 is really easy for the OH gop to get. But 2/3 would be easier to prevent .

[lfromnj]

Personally I think commissions are doing too much with trying to match the exact partisanship of a state with an Ohio 8-7 map or a Michigan 7-6 map or something like that. Why don’t they maximize competitive seats within geographical reason and let the voters pick? A hard 8-7 map feels like a bipartisan gerrymander. Like Ohio Dems should be able to win 10 seats if they make a miraculous recovery or the GOP should get 12/13 if it ends up going the way of Kentucky. Anybody else feel this way with commissions?

8 7 isn't that crazy in Ohio by just starting with the Lorain Cuyahoga district .    Its really the legislature where the demands are crazy.