Ohio redistricting thread

[lfromnj]

I drew up this 15 district fair map of Ohio, what do you guys think? Any things that should be worked on?

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::558e5a7a-5455-4a0c-adec-71fefd115e72

Your link doesn't work, you probably didn't press SHARE map.

Here it is
https://davesredistricting.org/join/56eb4684-2c06-4eb3-9744-64321e1129e6

Illegal in Cleveland, each district must be within 1 county or include a WHOLE county.

Also arguably playing a bit fire with the VRA as a compact 46-47% black district is possible. I think your map is only like 43%.

I moved around the precincts between Lorain/Medina in my district 14 to fix that issue. Is a 40% black and 50% minority district not enough to satisfy the VRA? I would assume my Cleveland district would still elect a black Dem candidate.

Its most likely fine although its playing a bit close. Just a warning. You do risk a MO01 situation where a candidate can probably win with only 35-40% of the black vote.  I think that's fine and isn't a bloc vote.

[lfromnj]

@WIresident make a rotation between green/tan/blue to put more of the youngstown area in one area. Also not 100% about that semi donut Cbus district. Also I would personally put Sandusky before Erie with the Toledo district but thats your choice.

[lfromnj]

Yes the Akron to Canton district is always a decent option and gives you a lot more leeway in the rest of NE Ohio and allows you to create 2 nice suburban Cleveland seats.

The other main question is what to do with Columbus. With 2020 population and 16 districts Franklin the best option would be to triple split Franklin although its more tricky with 15 districts.

[lfromnj]

@WIresident make a rotation between green/tan/blue to put more of the youngstown area in one area. Also not 100% about that semi donut Cbus district. Also I would personally put Sandusky before Erie with the Toledo district but thats your choice.

I drew up a second Ohio fair map and improved the VRA requirements for the Cleveland district. I also got rid of the donut district in Columbus and had that district pick up Springfield instead. My map ends up with 5 competitive districts; Columbus suburbs, Toledo/Bowling Green, Cleveland suburbs/Lorain, Northeast Ohio, and Akron area.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/b5f708d5-45eb-442a-96c6-983db0cf2e1c

Your Columbus district is illegal, you aren't allowed to have a pincer where a county is entered from 2 non contigious parts. Should be fairly easy to fix.

[lfromnj]

Inspired by Torie I did a real extrapolation of population trends until 2019 towards 2020 and this is what came out using 2020 population numbers:


I'm not too happy about Union County. When I draw the 8th and 9th I used all of Franklin and Delaware, which is the logical option regarding settlement patterns (and relatively D-friendly) and tried to make the 8th relatively Republican (staying inside Franklin and Delaware). I then needed another ca. 22k from another county. Sadly this wasn't doable going into Union without a very ugly cut into Marysville (not sure if in reality development in the county's SE could deliver ca. 20k). Hence I went into Licking county, which is probably not the worst choice.

In the NE I draw a very Democratic 11th that pushes the surrounding districts to the right.
Compared to WIResident's map my map has one district more on the Pennsylvanian border that is marginally competitive (Sherrod Brown won it). On the other hand my Akron district is 4 points more to the right than WIResident's and my Lorain/Western suburbs district is 9 points to the right which is maybe a bit excessive.

Overall this still seems about fair:
3 safe/likely D seats
1 Trump +0 tossup (by 2016 numbers) that swung to Biden
2 tilt R districts in Toledo and Akron/Canton
2 seats that voted exactly like Ohio as a whole to the East and West of Cleveland
1 seat that was slightly to the right of Ohio as a whole in 2016 and exactly like Ohio as a whole in 2020 and was a about even in Brown vs. Renacci in Dayton
1 seat around Youngstown that has moved away from the Democrats rapidly, but was won by Brown by ca. six points as late as 2018
5 safe R seats

I think its fine to do a  mild triple split of Franklin if you want the Union +Delaware mashed together . Just remove the SW part of Franklin which is probably the most exurban and least developed part. Give it to the district to the south etc. FWIW I don't think it would affect partisanship too much. Either way Union doesn't have to be with Delaware I just think it should be if its reasonably possible. Also I would try to keep Holmes county together. Its such a unique area that it should be in one district although I think you kept most of the Amish parts together.

[lfromnj]

[...]
I think its fine to do a  mild triple split of Franklin if you want the Union +Delaware mashed together . Just remove the SW part of Franklin which is probably the most exurban and least developed part. Give it to the district to the south etc. FWIW I don't think it would affect partisanship too much. Either way Union doesn't have to be with Delaware I just think it should be if its reasonably possible. Also I would try to keep Holmes county together. Its such a unique area that it should be in one district although I think you kept most of the Amish parts together.

I think that for the moment I will leave it as it is. It seems that the SE corner of Licking county that I included in the 8th has some suburban development as well, so that's not a completely bad choice.

Thank you for suggesting the Holmes County Amish CoI. I will respect it in future maps. What I did was really just a micro-chop at a random corner of the map to come closer to population equality, but that could be done at any other place as well. It's just not worth it to post a new map because it has basically no influence on the big picture.

By the way, a slightly disconnected observation, and you may have to excuse me for my stupid un-American perspective. I tried to figure out where the suburban and exurban areas are in NE Ohio and in Central Ohio. And in NE Ohio I really had a lot of difficulties because there is a lot of ugly suburban sprawl going on that sets in gradually. Whereas around Columbus there is a much clearer line between suburban areas on the one hand and rural areas with small cities, towns, villages, settlements and farms on the other hand. (It's clear that these "rural" areas are not really rural, but they're not devoured by the sprawl either.)

Yes its definitely tough to guess out NE Ohio. Columbus isn't easy either even if the sprawl ends  you still have weird districts.

Cincinatti-Dayton is the easiest and most obvious. The suburban sprawl stops somewhere in Mid Warren county but begins again in North Warren county which means the obvious meaning is that that sprawn in the northern half of Warren County is Dayton suburbs. As your Cinci suburban district will have leftovers that decision is therefore logically made.

Now on the other hand Northern Summit besides the very top is still more Akron Suburbia but we have to keep it with Cleveland and it isn't the worst choice. Also unlike Columbus or Cinci with clear class/racial divide lines , Cleveland has a weirder class divide line. In Cinci the upscale suburbs are the East and NE. Meanwhile in Columbus its the northern part However in Cleveland the upscale suburbs are on opposite ends of Cleveland with East Cleveland going from Shaker Heights to the western part of Geagua county. There is also the other upscale half around Lakewood to Rocky River and a few more towns. Therefore its harder to make that type of district.


Even if keeping Lorain with Cuyahoga is perfectly reasonable I would like to mention its not really Cleveland Suburbia only the border of the county really is. Its more of its own area.


But yes unique areas like Holmes County Ohio or Robeson county NC should have the highest possible attempt to avoid being split as they are literally the most obvious communities of interest. I knew it was merely a few hundred for pop equality but I just wanted to mention it and I totally understand not wanting to make that annoying rotation.

[lfromnj]

OK folks I have a challenge for ya'll.  Now that Steve Stivers is retiring the least painful thing for Republican to do would be eliminating his district and then drawing incumbent protection districts for the rest of the delegation.  Does anyone think they could do this and still follow the rules of the new redistricting amendment?

There really isn't a way to chop Stiver's seat from a GOP favorable perspective. that would likely mean pushing OH-03 south which makes Ohio 12th either a tossup to Safe D depending how you draw it.

[lfromnj]

OK folks I have a challenge for ya'll.  Now that Steve Stivers is retiring the least painful thing for Republican to do would be eliminating his district and then drawing incumbent protection districts for the rest of the delegation.  Does anyone think they could do this and still follow the rules of the new redistricting amendment?

There really isn't a way to chop Stiver's seat from a GOP favorable perspective. that would likely mean pushing OH-03 south which makes Ohio 12th either a tossup to Safe D depending how you draw it.

Isn't it possible for the 12th to pull out of Franklin completely?

Well then somebody would have to take northern Franklin which would it make it quite swingy without parts of Southern Franklin being  in Stivers district.

[lfromnj]

This version has one more county chop, but the CD’s are considerably more compact, so I prefer it I think.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/995251ad-8fd4-424f-af16-e5e8aeebe7a7

If its a GOP gerrymander switch Allen and Wood.

[lfromnj]

Dayton is also changed. Its in a swing Biden +5 seat now.

[lfromnj]

This will be a fun lawsuit. The OH republicans didn't even try to give it the apperance of being fair.

I have real trouble seeing how the OH supreme court upholds this.

Yeah this seems like an in-and-out case. Multiple commissioners deriding the process, lack of transparency, and potential minority vote dilution, and potential voiding of commission compactness and COI guidelines. Of course, when the map gets thrown out 4-3 they are apparently required to order the commission start over this time under their supervision, whereas congressionally the court can take over completely.

Don't see where there any VRA issues?
Columbus has one majority black district. Cincinatti has a 40% black. It may be possible to keep a majority black district there but it would  just make more sense to keep it whole. Cleveland has one majority district and one plurality district.

[lfromnj]

Democrats should follow this brilliant logic in their states....New York Democrats won 100% of statewide elections in the past decade so I guess they're entitled to 100% of the seats, correct?

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1438470041817735168

Can whichever blue avatar wrote that memo please defend their thinking here.  tyia

I mean it is LOL TIER thinking although the tweet does slightly misquote it. They said take the average statewide share(54%) and average statewide win share(81%). This is 67%. They really just wanted a way to get up to 67%.

[lfromnj]

Here's an 11R-4D that pretty clearly adheres to even a strict reading of the Ohio Constitution's splitting provisions.
Here's the details

False.
Every district needs to have atleast 1 whole county unless its wholly within 1 county

[lfromnj]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

[lfromnj]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

Safe as In Kunze safe or safe as in all decade long?

[lfromnj]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

Safe as In Kunze safe or safe as in all decade long?

I think they moved it to a seat the Biden barely won or Trump narrowly won by adding parts of an adjacent county.

An adjacent county has to be added . Infact 2 exurbs could have been added and they would have had less deviation. Surprised they didn't.  Overall I think Columbus is pretty fair with 4 Biden seats. Its on Ohio Democrats to win them.

Also I probably wouldn't call Maharaths seat safe just because it is Maharath.Maharashtra.

But yeah other than Dayton and the Cleveland split I can't see anything too egregious

[lfromnj]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

Safe as In Kunze safe or safe as in all decade long?

Kunze is termed out in 2024 so it won’t be her. But yeah they made it easier to stay GOP by tacking on Union. It’s very ugly and they should have just made a WWC R-trending seat in the south county.

Yeah the Democrats map did that but they shoved that county with downtown Columbus.

LOL.

[lfromnj]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

Safe as In Kunze safe or safe as in all decade long?

I think they moved it to a seat the Biden barely won or Trump narrowly won by adding parts of an adjacent county.

An adjacent county has to be added . Infact 2 exurbs could have been added and they would have had less deviation. Surprised they didn't.  Overall I think Columbus is pretty fair with 4 Biden seats. Its on Ohio Democrats to win them.

Also I probably wouldn't call Maharaths seat safe just because it is Maharath.Maharashtra.

But yeah other than Dayton and the Cleveland split I can't see anything too egregious

A seat Biden won by 18 and Hillary likely won by at least 10 should be close to safe even for Maharath.

Maharath's current seat is Clinton +10 as well.

[lfromnj]

This was the final Ohio Democratic proposal. They gave on the 2nd Cinci seat and gave Trumbull and Mahoning separate districts(Although Congressionally they absolutely should be together it is a bit awkward to work them in at the state senate level)

Still it is pretty disingenuous to complain about the original GOP proposal placing Dayton with a bunch of super rural counties which obviously is extremely absurd ,and then placing downtown Columbus with Pickaway county. Also if the Ohio R proposal violated the VRA, I have no idea how this one didn't. It's incredibly easy and logical to create 2 black majority/plurality districts in Cleveland but the Democratic proposal didn't seem to. They wanted to crack the Eastern suburbs to create 2 Safe Dem districts as Dem voters are really packed in the East because of areas like Shaker heights including both black people and super woke whites. So funnily enough Democrats are actually "packed" in the Cleveland area not due to segregation but actually desegregation !


The second Cincinnati seat is just an unfortunate event for Democrats which is hard to create without creating  a pretty weird district in West Ohio.



Edit: The state house map is even better. So not only did Democrats want to create a Safe D district even with Pickaway county attached for the state senate but they also wanted a likely dem district in the state house by attaching Pickaway county to a bunch of 80% D areas. However it gets even better. Basically every other district in Franklin county would be underpopulated by the maximum 5%  while this district would be overpopulated so it could take in more 80% D minority areas. Basically what the NC GOP did yesterday to the state house leader. Funnily enough the district is closer to a tossup due it being a Trump friendly district demographically, even with all this work done to deny the GOP a single representative in Franklin county.

[lfromnj]

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.

[lfromnj]

This was the final Ohio Democratic proposal. They gave on the 2nd Cinci seat and gave Trumbull and Mahoning separate districts(Although Congressionally they absolutely should be together it is a bit awkward to work them in at the state senate level)

Still it is pretty disingenuous to complain about the original GOP proposal placing Dayton with a bunch of super rural counties which obviously is extremely absurd ,and then placing downtown Columbus with Pickaway county. Also if the Ohio R proposal violated the VRA, I have no idea how this one didn't. It's incredibly easy and logical to create 2 black majority/plurality districts in Cleveland but the Democratic proposal didn't seem to. They wanted to crack the Eastern suburbs to create 2 Safe Dem districts as Dem voters are really packed in the East because of areas like Shaker heights including both black people and super woke whites. So funnily enough Democrats are actually "packed" in the Cleveland area not due to segregation but actually desegregation !


The second Cincinnati seat is just an unfortunate event for Democrats which is hard to create without creating  a pretty weird district in West Ohio.



Edit: The state house map is even better. So not only did Democrats want to create a Safe D district even with Pickaway county attached for the state senate but they also wanted a likely dem district in the state house by attaching Pickaway county to a bunch of 80% D areas. However it gets even better. Basically every other district in Franklin county would be underpopulated by the maximum 5%  while this district would be overpopulated so it could take in more 80% D minority areas. Basically what the NC GOP did yesterday to the state house leader. Funnily enough the district is closer to a tossup due it being a Trump friendly district demographically, even with all this work done to deny the GOP a single representative in Franklin county.

Would Dems even have a chance at a majority at any time on their own map?

Median seat seems to be the Stark seat so no. They also have to win both Mahoning seats. Their goal was to mostly prevent a GOP 3/5 majority in the state house.

[lfromnj]

So what are the odds that the commission actually produces a congressional map before 10/31?  I'd say like a 0.2% chance.

Too far of a gap to really compromise on compared to the legislative which came a bit close. 65 vs 55 R house seats compared to 7 vs 3 congressional seats.

[lfromnj]

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.

What about Pickaway and Adams or Union with Logan or Champaign?

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/jbalmert/status/1453041914945720326?s=20

https://twitter.com/jbalmert/status/1453042278038126601?s=20

I wonder if the Ohio GOP will find Torie's map acceptable. I think he said he submitted it.

[lfromnj]

Very serious organization.

Presenting illegal maps lmao.(Easy to fix but shows how negligent they are)