Poll re 2020 Ohio CD Map

[Benj]

Map 1 is pretty easy. I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with Map 2 that isn't achieved with Map 1, but the small towns-to-suburbs district along the Ohio River is bad. Map 3 is a mess in the Cincinnati area (connecting the city of Cincinnati to rural small towns while splitting it from its heavily minority suburbs? Really? Don't try to argue that's not partisanly motivated).

[Benj]

The maps speak for themselves. The factors to evaluate are keeping metro areas together, and minimizing county cuts and erosity.  Map I was criticized because the south Columbus CD went "all the way" to the Ohio River.  It doesn't particular bother me that much, but it bothers others. And in that map the Cincinnati suburban CD is kind of awkward, while in the other maps, there is more compactness. Also, in Map 3 makes OH-05 the most compact, and it includes quasi exurban, and becoming more so over time, Madison County, so all the Columbus metro area in in 3 CD's. So chopping Hamilton County has its offsetting benefits.

I gave the partisan stats. Yes in one the GOP numbers are better for Cincinnati, but by 2022, the Dems will probably win it either way. Bear in mind that the city of Cincinnati itself should trend heavily Dem as it gets more black, and has more singles and so forth which attends that. What was deleted from the CD in Hamilton County is pretty heavily Pub overall, just not as Pub as the average of Clemont and the 3 river counties.

"It might vote Democratic 10 years from now" is your best defense to blatantly ripping apart communities of interest in the Cincinnati area? Frankly, the partisanship is even beside the point--you have provided no legitimate justification whatsoever for why Cincinnati should be combined with rural areas a hundred miles away with which it has literally nothing in common yet not be combined with its demographically similar suburbs that it directly abuts. Your proposal 3 is nothing but the worst of gerrymandering, and your attempts to justify it are exactly the sort of flimsy excuses provided by expert gerrymanderers like the Michigan GOP.

There are no offsetting benefits whatsoever. All of your district 5s are just a collection of unrelated rural towns plus some Columbus suburbs. Adding or subtracting some rural areas is pretty meaningless. If areas like Portsmouth were to go with some other district, it would be district 13--though stretching that further along the Ohio River has (not necessarily negative) knock-on effects elsewhere. Including Madison County or not is irrelevant. You would sacrifice the literally hundreds of thousands of connections in the Cincinnati area for a handful of exurban commuters near Columbus?

[Benj]

I like that map a lot and had begun drafting something very similar myself. I agree that Ashtabula County basically goes where you need it. It has little in common with any other county. Draw the map and put Ashtabula wherever you need to based on how the rest of NE Ohio shakes out. Splitting Ashtabula to balance population isn't really a problem, though; southern Ashtabula is very rural and has nothing in common with the areas along the lake, really. It's important to recognize that county lines poorly reflect communities of interest.

[Benj]

I like that map a lot and had begun drafting something very similar myself. I agree that Ashtabula County basically goes where you need it. It has little in common with any other county. Draw the map and put Ashtabula wherever you need to based on how the rest of NE Ohio shakes out. Splitting Ashtabula to balance population isn't really a problem, though; southern Ashtabula is very rural and has nothing in common with the areas along the lake, really. It's important to recognize that county lines poorly reflect communities of interest.

It may be true that county lines don't reflect real CoI's but they are a well-established proxy for a CoI. Even the Census uses them as building blocks to define metropolitan areas. Using them as a proxy is important since it provides an objective criterion for judging a map.

Not really. County lines are a crutch, not an objective criterion. They're for people who aren't willing to be intellectually serious enough to actually try to examine the settlement patterns of a given area. Maybe courts are lazy, but we should demand better.

[Benj]

Why not put Lorain and Elyria in OH-10 and Wood County (and maybe some of Seneca and/or Huron for population) in OH-09 (and rearrange OH-08 to fit)? Probably requires a few other counties moved around, but there are Toledo suburbs in Wood County that belong with Lucas, and Lorain and Elyria, while not exactly Cleveland suburbs themselves, have much closer ties with the Cleveland suburbs than with Toledo (and certainly much closer ties with the Cleveland suburbs than Mount Vernon does!). Might need to rearrange the OH-08/OH-04 boundary a bit for neatness, too, but that border is pretty arbitrary.

Also, I guess you can't fit all of New Philadelphia in the Akron-Canton district? Because that would be neater than going into Carroll County.

[Benj]

I don't have partisan motivations, though your comments make me suspect you do. How else would call a Cleveland to Mount Vernon district "not erose"? Anyway, I've been working on an alternative map that looks a lot like traininthedistance's, but I'd be glad to work from your base and show how wrong you are about your complaints.

[Benj]

I don't have partisan motivations, though your comments make me suspect you do. How else would call a Cleveland to Mount Vernon district "not erose"? Anyway, I've been working on an alternative map that looks a lot like traininthedistance's, but I'd be glad to work from your base and show how wrong you are about your complaints.

PM me your email address, and I will send you my data file. Erosity by the way, means jagged and elongated. OH-10 is not erose; it's a nice rectangle. Your complaint is about communities of interest. If you add Knox to OH-08, you lose, because of erosity factors. I just know that you are just itching to do that. Ditto adding it to OH-13.

In the meantime, here is a screen shot of the population variances. And here is a link to the county population projections for the counties in 2020. Just select Ohio from the list of states drop down to get the county numbers for Ohio. Good luck.

[

I know what erosity means. You don't need to talk down to me. It's rude and juvenile.

And it is erose as it stands--you can't possibly argue otherwise. Yes, adding it to OH-08 without changing anything else would make OH-08 even more erose--but that's not what I'm proposing. OH-08 becomes a north-central Ohio district that stays at least two counties away from Indiana and OH-04 covers the western border. Which are more sensible communities of interest anyway, since Lima and rural western Ohio are the uber-Catholic regions while rural north-central Ohio (Mansville, Marion, Mount Vernon, Marysville; lots of Ms) has none of that.

[Benj]

I await your map. Your comment about OH-10 was about communities of interest, and not erosity, so that is why I wondered if you knew what it meant. I don't consider OH-10 erose myself, although yes, it would be less erose without Knox, and adding the balance of Lorain, but as I suspect you will see, it will wreck havoc with other CD's vis a vis erosity if you do that.

I notice that you refer to communities of interest again, now about religion. I don't consider that a legitimate criteria - certainly not in the context you mention, but if you can do it without more erosity, more power to you. You are not going to mess with OH-03 are you? That CD is just perfect. If you mess with that, you in mind mind violate the first principle, which is keeping metro areas together, assuming it can be done without egregious erosity. Again, good luck. Prove the old man a senile dunderhead. Go for it!

I like OH-03 on that map, so no, unless it turns out I can do it better. I haven't fiddled around with the Cincinnati area, so I'm not sure what's possible, but that split looks appropriate to me.

Frankly, if communities of interest aren't a concern, I don't know why you don't just use the DRA rectangles function and be done with it.

[Benj]

Here we go:



There are a few more county splits than necessary as I do not shy away from them, but cutting down the county splits (around, say, OH-10) would make very little difference overall.

Here are the variances. I did rough calculations in my head based on your figures and the major counties I shifted around rather than doing all the math out, but there shouldn't be more than a 10k or so difference for any district. Estimating more accurately than that 8 years in advance is pretty futile anyway.



I altered every district except the southwestern three and the Columbus district at least slightly.


And, partisanship for the altered districts, if we're curious:

OH-04: 36-62 McCain
OH-05: 41-57 M
OH-07: 44-54 M
OH-08: 41-57 M
OH-09: 59-39 Obama
OH-10: 53-45 O
OH-11: 79-20 O (51-41, White-Black on VAP, a marginal increase in Black % on Torie's map)
OH-12: 57-42 O
OH-13: 47-50 M
OH-14: 56-42 O
OH-15: 49-50 M

[Benj]

I'm not too familiar here with the geography but is Warren here serving as a bridge or is that cut helping make a suburban concentric circle around Cincinnati? Does the Warren/Montgomery border also delineate a difference in mentalities between Dayton and Cincy?

I agree; I think the split of Warren is justified by much more than a "bridge". The suburban district has to split one of Warren, Butler or Clermont, and Warren is the most natural choice, being closest to Dayton. The fact that it's in the middle is sort of irrelevant. Most of the population of Warren is in the Cincinnati suburbs district, too, not the Dayton district.

You could argue a split of both Warren and Butler to put Middletown into the Dayton district and then put only the Franklin area in Warren with Dayton, which I think would be slightly better on COI but not enough better to necessarily be worth doing.

[Benj]

Nice Dem gerrymander Benj.  Very good indeed. I particularly like OH-10, and the way you made sure it picked up Parma to seal the deal for the Dems (creating more erosity when Strongsville Township is closer), and forcing OH-14 to do that little spike to the west, while also having OH-14 chop Portage to bits (which fails the minimizing the size of the chops rule, which needs to be in play along with limiting the number of chops). You have an extra chop I see for OH-14. It should not go into Medina the way you have it. OH-14, OH-13 and OH-05 fail the erosity test, and arguably OH-04 (it's just too long). OH-10 I see has five county chops, yes five. Wow! OH-04 has no chop at all for some reason. Did its population just turn out to be 779,000?  Union County is not a Columbus metro county, but I guess one can justify that by arguing that east Licking is not part of the metro area either that you deleted, even though it is part of a metro county. Not good, but not terrible that bit.

I actually did Parma to avoid township splitting. That made OH-15 exactly the right size without any splits. I tried a few other arrangements, but none worked out. Your map split a few townships that were unnecessary. That's why I split a bit off of Medina County, too. Towns are more cohesive than counties in suburban areas. I had an alternative that didn't split Medina County or go into Parma but did take a town from Summit into OH-10. It was definitely less favorable to the Democrats than this version, but I gave it up because it was messier and also didn't reduce county splits. You can try fiddling around with that area if you want, but there's no good way to do it other than this way without splitting municipalities.

I also have no idea why you're concerned about the split of Portage for partisan reasons. If anything, it favors the Republicans, as it strands heavily Democratic Kent in a McCain district that's unwinnable for the Democrats. And it's actually not really a big split--the vast majority of the population of Portage is in OH-15.

My OH-13 and OH-05 are less erose than yours, so you need to justify your complaints. OH-14 is just a rectangle and very clearly reasonable set of areas. Your map contains three extremely erose districts, OH-10, OH-08 and OH-04 while there is no comparably erose district on my map.

Also, calling a 6D-9R map a Democratic gerrymander is a bit rich, at the very least. But your 4D-11R (edit: sorry, 5D-10R once you were shamed into not splitting up the Akron-Canton area) map is completely fair and not malicious at all, you swear!

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Yes, a lesson in why your map is more erose and also more gerrymandered than mine. You are an unpleasantly arrogant and hypocritical person.

[Benj]

Here's another way to edit the Cleveland area to remove the Medina split and put Parma in OH-14 while not splitting any municipalities. Of course, I don't think Torie would approve on partisanship; OH-14 is now a 50-49 Obama district while OH-10 is still 52-46 Obama.

You could do it with fewer changes from my original map if you kept Parma Heights in OH-10 while putting Parma in OH-14 (and putting Strongsville and Hinckley in OH-10), but that's definitely more erose (and has basically identical partisan numbers to this map).

[Benj]

Better. The partisan result does not matter for this exercise. You have diluted down the black percentage some for OH-11 I see. I suppose that is allowed under the VRA, but to me that is a negative. I know the black politicians won't like it.

No, it's up, not down from your original map. Only very marginally, but it's up by about a thousand black voters. Yours is 50.6% white, 40.5% black; mine is 50.3% white, 40.6% black (on VAP for both).

Ah, I see. It only went up with my edits. Missed that Mayfield Heights has a non-negligible black population of about 10% (was in both of our OH-14s but is now in my OH-11 after the Parma-related edits). Well, it's up now. You had also left out 8% black Walton Hills from OH-11 (probably because it voted for McCain). I did put in the super-white Valley View, but that was to keep the Cuyahoga River boundary. It was awkward to have only Valley View on the east side of the river in OH-14. There might be a way to remove it, but you'd end up putting in some other super-white eastern suburb if you don't split municipalities. The western suburbs are all too big; Valley View's only a couple thousand people.

[Benj]

I think I like Torie's design for Cincinnati better, but that isn't horrible. It looks like you might have split off some of the black areas in northern Hamilton County from the Cincinnati district, though. That's absolutely out of the question and would constitute dilution (not in a VRA sense, of course, but it's definitely worse than splitting counties).

Ah, I see. It only went up with my edits. Missed that Mayfield Heights has a non-negligible black population of about 10% (was in both of our OH-14s but is now in my OH-11 after the Parma-related edits). Well, it's up now. You had also left out 8% black Walton Hills from OH-11 (probably because it voted for McCain). I did put in the super-white Valley View, but that was to keep the Cuyahoga River boundary. It was awkward to have only Valley View on the east side of the river in OH-14. There might be a way to remove it, but you'd end up putting in some other super-white eastern suburb if you don't split municipalities. The western suburbs are all too big; Valley View's only a couple thousand people.

By 2020, I would assume Walton Hills to have a substantially larger black population than it does today and no longer vote Republican. Walton Hills is part of the Bedford City School District, which services almost only black areas with Walton Hills as the only exception.

However, I would assume Valley View to be maybe 5% black by then with largely the same voting patterns. While it is on the eastern shore of the Cuyahoga, it is geographically isolated from the other eastern suburbs by a railroad, several large industrial sites, and forests. It is part of the Cuyahoga Heights school district with Cuyahoga Heights and Brooklyn Heights. These three are all isolated, overwhelmingly white, and in my opinion unlikely to change much by 2020.

Well, then Valley View should probably be in the Cleveland district anyway, as Cuyahoga Heights pretty much has to go in the Cleveland district due to geography, and I also moved Brooklyn Heights into the Cleveland district in my recent edits.

Definitely true that in general the Cleveland district should be reaching mostly or entirely into the eastern suburbs rather than the western. That's where the black population is moving.

[Benj]

I think I like Torie's design for Cincinnati better, but that isn't horrible. It looks like you might have split off some of the black areas in northern Hamilton County from the Cincinnati district, though. That's absolutely out of the question and would constitute dilution (not in a VRA sense, of course, but it's definitely worse than splitting counties).

Forest Park could be swapped for the Evendale-Blue Ash piece which would increase erosity. That switch only increases the BVAP from 20.8% to 22.3% so it would be hard to make a antidilution argument for a 1.5% increase.

Seems like a significant difference to me. A 1.5% decrease in BVAP is much more important than a tiny bit of erosity.