Ohio redistricting thread

[lfromnj]

Very serious organization.

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

Illegal in what way? It's hard to tell from that angle.

I drew a map myself, but not really any better than some of the maps I've seen here. I think a fair map of Ohio has to do a few things, especially under the new criteria. Three safe seats are created for Democrats in the 3C cities (Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati). The Toledo seat should take in territory along Lake Erie in what should be a highly competitive seat. There should also be a compact Akron-based seat that should also be highly competitive (maybe slightly D-leaning). Western Cuyahoga County fits nicely with Lorain County, creating a slightly D-leaning competitive seat. A somewhat more controversial decision, though very justifiable, is to put northern Franklin with Delaware County. That would create a new near-safe Democratic district. The Dayton district would remain a Lean R district (though maybe closer to Likely R than Toss-up). The last non-safe district would be the northeastern district that would end up going from Lake County to Youngstown. Democrats would've killed for that district a decade ago, but it's Likely R now. That leaves 6 mostly rural safe R districts.

All in all, I think the fairest way to draw Ohio is 6 safe R districts, 4 safe D, 1 Likely R, 1 Lean R, and 3 in the range of Tilt D or Toss-up. It makes sense both geographically and with the recent political trends of the state. Prior to Trump, the geography of Ohio was pretty good for Democrats. The recent weakness in the northeast is extremely problematic for Democrats in the state. However, Ohio is nothing close to Missouri.

It is barely illegal but the Lorain West Cuyahoga is illegal in that it doesn't have a whole county or it is not wholly within 1 county. Should be easy to fix but still hilarious. Maybe an organization that focused on the issue should actually make sure the map is legal on the stricter objective criteria?

[lfromnj]

Very serious organization.

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

Illegal in what way? It's hard to tell from that angle.

I drew a map myself, but not really any better than some of the maps I've seen here. I think a fair map of Ohio has to do a few things, especially under the new criteria. Three safe seats are created for Democrats in the 3C cities (Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati). The Toledo seat should take in territory along Lake Erie in what should be a highly competitive seat. There should also be a compact Akron-based seat that should also be highly competitive (maybe slightly D-leaning). Western Cuyahoga County fits nicely with Lorain County, creating a slightly D-leaning competitive seat. A somewhat more controversial decision, though very justifiable, is to put northern Franklin with Delaware County. That would create a new near-safe Democratic district. The Dayton district would remain a Lean R district (though maybe closer to Likely R than Toss-up). The last non-safe district would be the northeastern district that would end up going from Lake County to Youngstown. Democrats would've killed for that district a decade ago, but it's Likely R now. That leaves 6 mostly rural safe R districts.

All in all, I think the fairest way to draw Ohio is 6 safe R districts, 4 safe D, 1 Likely R, 1 Lean R, and 3 in the range of Tilt D or Toss-up. It makes sense both geographically and with the recent political trends of the state. Prior to Trump, the geography of Ohio was pretty good for Democrats. The recent weakness in the northeast is extremely problematic for Democrats in the state. However, Ohio is nothing close to Missouri.

It is barely illegal but the Lorain West Cuyahoga is illegal in that it doesn't have a whole county or it is not wholly within 1 county. Should be easy to fix but still hilarious. Maybe an organization that focused on the issue should actually make sure the map is legal on the stricter objective criteria?

Doesn't the text also prevent splitting any counties twice? What can you do in Lorain?

Cuyahoga/Summit/Hamilton/Montgomery/Franklin can all be split twice. Again this is an easy rotation to just have that district take the rest of Lorain.

[lfromnj]

Jesus christ that is horrific and not even efficient. It also looks objectively illegal( as in a judge can't ignore it) because of the Toledo seat.

[lfromnj]

District 1 seems to be a Biden seat and 15 is only Trump +9. Not as fast left trending though as it is more South Columbus based.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/JacksonMartinKS/status/1455920087085559814?t=6mo6Vzf1R3zstgf...

[lfromnj]

Like why crack the black Columbus community between the R districts instead of just you know the logical pack ?

[lfromnj]

Pretty sure a 3-way split of Hamilton is also illegal under the new OH provision. At best for the GOP they have to significantly modify their maps.

Also WTF the GOP really tryna crack Columbus? What could go wrong?

A 3 way split of Hamilton/Montgomery/Summit/Cuyahoga/Franklin are all legal.

[lfromnj]

Looking at it, the senate proposed map seems to be a sort of competitive mander in Columbus where the trends are GOP favorable or neutralish? Cordray did win the southern seat.

[lfromnj]

What’s the purpose of the new Jim Jordan district? Either it’s to bait Democratic into pouring money into the seat or to push Jordan towards a Senate run.

I mean Jordan taking Delaware county has been the obvious move for a long time. Not sure why it needs to take the black areas though.

[lfromnj]

lolhttps://twitter.com/dskolnick/status/1456331028373643273?t=NVn2ahjdhyobx-i3JmYRw...

Yeah its amazing how they couldn't even follow simple rules that still made it very easy to draw a 13-2.

[lfromnj]

I was tried to draw a R gerrymander, but when I was the northern OH seat, they turned out to be toss-up or lean R seats so I scraped that idea and made a more compact fairish map that doesn't crack Cincinnati. I hope I didn't brake any OH redistricting rule. The compactness score is a decent 63% so there's that.  

https://davesredistricting.org/join/39a97651-6a7a-494f-8a86-507e5c0a12c3

I believe all of Lorain has to be in the 7th.

I found this good info for OH redistricting rules. 18 Counties can be split once and 5 counties may be split twice. But if Lorain has to be splits, oh well.  

https://redistricting.lls.edu/state/ohio/?cycle=2020&level=Congress&startdate=

Isn't there a part that requires either a district wholly within every county large enough for a district, or a whole county in every district that is not the former? That's what I thought was the case anyway.
(I'm aware Hamilton is the singular exception)

There is no such rule.  Cincinatti just requres that it be included in a district which has a whole county which could be Clermont + Rurals(gerrymander) or could just all be inside Hamilton(fair)

[lfromnj]

Doing rough sketches of them in DRA, I got that OH-1 is Biden+1.1, OH-9 is Trump+4.6, and OH-13 is Biden+1.2.

Lorrain to Mercer is absurd.

Absurd although not even needed considering 4 and 5 could just trade.  Not sure why they did it.

[lfromnj]

Don't give them ideas. Hopefully, the Ohio Supreme Court will force something more reasonable. Even a soft Republican gerrymander could be acceptable. The problem is that Republicans in the Legislature are really going for the fences with these maps.

I mean a soft Republican gerrymander could be fairly clean and probably more effective.The main reason its so ugly is mostly due to incumbent demands.



This is how bad the issue is. There are basically 6 incumbents for 4 districts worth of population. Extreme pain.  Replace the Yellow Johnson with Joyce. As you can see taking care of Northern Ohio is fairly compact. Joyce has a somewhat shaky district at Trump +8 but it isn't really trending anywhere. It's even fairly easy to draw the rest of Ohio  but the issue is giving those 6 incumbents their own seats (you can give Chabot and Wenstrup each a winnable Cinci seat.)

[lfromnj]

Don't give them ideas. Hopefully, the Ohio Supreme Court will force something more reasonable. Even a soft Republican gerrymander could be acceptable. The problem is that Republicans in the Legislature are really going for the fences with these maps.

I mean a soft Republican gerrymander could be fairly clean and probably more effective.The main reason its so ugly is mostly due to incumbent demands.

I would argue that a soft Republican gerrymander cedes the Big C cities to the Democrats. In fact, small changes to the new Republican proposal could make it just that. First, give up on Cincinnati and cede a district entirely within Hamilton County. Swap some territory between 4, 5, and 9 to make 9 a more balanced district. Make some changes to 15 to make it more balanced as well. I'd also say clean up the lines between 13 and 7.

I guess my point is making the seats more compact. It's possible to do this but the northern seat can't head East, as that would take Carrey's hometown but if it takes all of Butler that means Davidson has to find territory.

I don't see why a soft Republican gerrymander does anything but nuke 9. As you can see my map does it and its extremely compact and nothing a court would strike down on any grounds other than partisanship.  Even if one argued that Wood should go with Lucas(It should) then you can still create a Trump +7 district but I don't think Latta wants to go into a hard fight against Kaptur.

Having 15 take all of Franklin after the 3rd is reasonable. It is fairly easy to argue that one in court as keeping as much of Columbus as whole as possible. It's arguable that you could even have Jordan take the Northern part of Franklin but the GOP map only splits Franklin once(which is the bare minimum as it is too big for a single district)
However the GOP had some certain goals. They wanted to create a dem leaning district for Kaptur on the composite so as not to disadvantage her too much. That made the NW ugly. They also wanted to create a tossup in the NE area . This made some ugliness.

Lastly we have the SW Ohio GOP hellhole but yes you are obviously right that splitting Hamilton is the most controversial move and would probably need to given up.

[lfromnj]

If Democrats aren't sure about the court final ruling it might make sense to lock in the map for 10 years. 1 of the Biden seats is trending pretty D while the other one should remain swingy for a while. The Toledo seat is moving right but the Columbus seat is moving left.(Although not super fast)  As a bonus they even drew a favorable Dem Dayton seat which should be winnable if Turner retires or moves up.

[lfromnj]

If Democrats aren't sure about the court final ruling it might make sense to lock in the map for 10 years. 1 of the Biden seats is trending pretty D while the other one should remain swingy for a while. The Toledo seat is moving right but the Columbus seat is moving left.(Although not super fast)  As a bonus they even drew a favorable Dem Dayton seat which should be winnable if Turner retires or moves up.

Not a chance, OH SC or bust!

Definitely a gamble, based on timing as well. Will be very well worth it if it works and Connor makes specific requirements. If it doesn't and when the Ohio Supreme court likely flips it could be a massive flop with a future redraw.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/JoshRultNews/status/1460768863591845889

[lfromnj]

If Democrats aren't sure about the court final ruling it might make sense to lock in the map for 10 years. 1 of the Biden seats is trending pretty D while the other one should remain swingy for a while. The Toledo seat is moving right but the Columbus seat is moving left.(Although not super fast)  As a bonus they even drew a favorable Dem Dayton seat which should be winnable if Turner retires or moves up.

Not a chance, OH SC or bust!

Definitely a gamble, based on timing as well. Will be very well worth it if it works and Connor makes specific requirements. If it doesn't and when the Ohio Supreme court likely flips it could be a massive flop

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Really depends, probably worth hoping with the lawsuit for the congressional map but with regards to the state senate map Dems really should have just taken it. Yes a lawsuit may result in a Safe D instead of a Lean D Dayton district and maybe a safer West Cleveland district by adding Lakewood back in but both of these seats are Biden +5 and Biden +8 and hardly unwinnable for Democrats. On the other hand a redraw could very well risk the 4th winnable Columbus seat.

[lfromnj]

If Democrats aren't sure about the court final ruling it might make sense to lock in the map for 10 years. 1 of the Biden seats is trending pretty D while the other one should remain swingy for a while. The Toledo seat is moving right but the Columbus seat is moving left.(Although not super fast)  As a bonus they even drew a favorable Dem Dayton seat which should be winnable if Turner retires or moves up.

Not a chance, OH SC or bust!

Definitely a gamble, based on timing as well. Will be very well worth it if it works and Connor makes specific requirements. If it doesn't and when the Ohio Supreme court likely flips it could be a massive flop

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Really depends, probably worth hoping with the lawsuit for the congressional map but with regards to the state senate map Dems really should have just taken it. Yes a lawsuit may result in a Safe D instead of a Lean D Dayton district and maybe a safer West Cleveland district by adding Lakewood back in but both of these seats are Biden +5 and Biden +8 and hardly unwinnable for Democrats. On the other hand a redraw could very well risk the 4th winnable Columbus seat.

Hard disagree, these maps are all awful and a non-gerrymandered map can only help in the Columbus area.

The 4 senate districts in Columbus are underpopulated by 50k. It can very easily take Madison or Pickaway county and be based in the South part of the county while probably not trending much for the decade.. Instead right now it is a Biden +2 seat based more in the West and NW with Union county with mostly rapid movement leftwards so far. Is it worth risking a Biden seat that could flip D in order to make 2 Lean to Likely D seats at the presidential level Safe D? Even then the West Cleveland seat is pretty compact anyway.

[lfromnj]

Anyone got a shapefile for the new map?

Voila:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/fa470e25-db1b-45ac-ba7f-ea27792e3528

As to the complaint about the chopping of Summit, and the design of the chop does look suspicious,  in point of fact the populations dictate that Summit needs to be chopped, because even if OH-07 were removed from Summit, in exchange for Medina, OH-07 then has too many people, but if then removed from Cuyahoga to remedy that, has too few people, so no dice. What looks less like a gerrymander and a cleaner chop is OH-13 taking Stark and Summit ex of the northern suburbs, but it has the same partisan complexion as OH-13 in the enacted map, so no net Pub partisan advantage. Just one swing CD design is exchanged for another.



I then took on the more daunting task of how the Pubs could put lipstick of its OH-01 pig. The line of argument would be that hey it’s but a swing CD headed Dem, no big deal, and while it could be made lean Dem now, that would be at the cost of making otherwise merely lean Pub OH-10 more Pub sliding it into the pretty safe category (and in fact in a neutral map (click below) it does make OH-10 more Pub about 1.5 PVI points, so so far so good. That is the good Pub news. The bad Pub news is that it also makes OH-15 more Dem by about 2 PVI points, so the OH-01 Pubmander there still gives the Pubs a net “undue” advantage. It makes OH-01 swing instead of lean Dem, and switches OH-10 for OH-15 as the more marginal Pub CD.  And thus the Pub OH-01 defense is a fail because it has no defense, even with creative and imaginative lawyering. So sad for the Pubs as to OH-01.

I do think they are in good shape in NE Ohio however. They give the Dems a swing seat, which is all they should get per neutral redistricting principles, in addition to the Cleveland seat. It is just that the design of the OH-13 swing seat is different. It's generates more erosity than the other option, but is not more Pub.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/09d91f86-fb7f-4884-b467-6b5d3714a20e

The proposed swing Akron seat voted for Biden but your proposed one voted for Trump by 4.

[lfromnj]

Kinda seems like Summit and Hamilton counties are the focus for the congressional map.   The Columbus area isn't getting much conversation. 

Summit is risky. A possible solution is the Torie solution from a few pages ago

[lfromnj]

The GOP is really fighting a losing battle in the Cincinnati area. They should’ve just drawn a compact Hamilton seat and not have jeopardized their entire map in the process.

It was the desire to over satisfy incumbents. A clermont + Hamilton minus the black suburbs would be pretty similar to the Pittsburgh seat and a bit more defendable.



The suburban seat here is problematic for the future as its only Trump +12 and trending left quickly but it should be fine to 2024 obviously. Still a gerrymander although one could stretch  it to reasonably compact

[lfromnj]

The GOP is really fighting a losing battle in the Cincinnati area. They should’ve just drawn a compact Hamilton seat and not have jeopardized their entire map in the process.

It was the desire to over satisfy incumbents. A clermont + Hamilton minus the black suburbs would be pretty similar to the Pittsburgh seat and a bit more defendable.



The suburban seat here is problematic for the future as its only Trump +12 and trending left quickly but it should be fine to 2024 obviously. Still a gerrymander although one could stretch  it to reasonably compact

If there's one thing that has been repeatedly underestimated on this board, tbh, it's been the willingness of legislators to accept the desires of incumbents.

Yeah now these incumbents can cry when they don't have any seats to run in instead of just taking the above.

[lfromnj]

The GOP is really fighting a losing battle in the Cincinnati area. They should’ve just drawn a compact Hamilton seat and not have jeopardized their entire map in the process.

It was the desire to over satisfy incumbents. A clermont + Hamilton minus the black suburbs would be pretty similar to the Pittsburgh seat and a bit more defendable.



The suburban seat here is problematic for the future as its only Trump +12 and trending left quickly but it should be fine to 2024 obviously. Still a gerrymander although one could stretch  it to reasonably compact

What were the 2020 results of this two seats? IMO any configuration that didn’t have any Biden seats seemed likely to be struck down. I believe Chabot’s current seat was won by Biden, and it’s already gerrymandered and everyone knows it’s gerrymandered. Trying to push the envelope further on an already gerrymandered map was too risky for the OH GOP.

The Cincinatti seat is the same as the one in the proposed map. Biden +2. The Torie solution above for a Stark-Akron seat would be a Trump seat compared to the Akron West Cleveland seat but it would be D leaning instead of R leaning on the composite. A Canton Akron seat also seems like a pretty good district anyway.

[lfromnj]

Hahaha, rip Chabot. Hopefully the OHSC orders a full congressional remap as well and we get another winnable seat out of Cleveland, Columbus, or both.

If the court does the same thing, and makes proportionality under Section 6 their focus of scrutiny on the congressional plan, then we are all but guaranteed to see the Akron, Cincinnati, and second Columbus seats, as well as a much better Toledo one.

The Toledo seat should be D tilting under the metrics used I think.