Ohio redistricting thread

[EastAnglianLefty]

I don't think it makes a material difference. You can draw the Cincinnati district to be as Republican as possible without making any other seat marginal, so there's no downside to it for Republicans. There would need to be evidence of a big shift in the Hamilton County suburbs before it became worth conceding a district there.

[EastAnglianLefty]

No. The rules are designed to allow a GOP gerrymander, so the county-split rules quite deliberately ensure it's still permissible to split Hamilton.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Looking a bit more deeply at the language of the redistricting measure, it seems to be designed not just to allow Republicans to keep gerrymandering (eg the fact that cross-cutting is only allowed between Cuyahoga and Summit makes me think they might keep OH-11's arm into Akron) but also to make Democratic gerrymanders more difficult.

Obviously it's deeply deeply unlikely that either the Ohio House or the Senate will flip (and if they do it's probably because Biden makes big inroads in demographics Democrats bombed with in 2016, making any scheme now less than useful.) But just for the sake of argument I tried to draw a gerrymander and found that both the requirement to keep Cleveland whole and the ban on cross-cuts makes drawing Democratic districts more difficult. The former hurts because it means that OH-11 has to take in too many white Democrats in west Cleveland to take significant numbers of white Republicans in NE Ohio, the latter because it's harder to grab blue cities without also having to take their ruby-red suburbs.

This was the best I could manage:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ef954867-1844-405b-b0d4-1a7fd34a663c



9 districts have Democratic PVIs, but only two are wave-proof and three are realistically swing rather than Democratic seats. Columbus is chopped three ways and whilst OH-15 definitely takes the bulk of it, it's questionable whether you'd get away with splitting the remainder between two different seats. Undoing that probably makes OH-12 safer for Dems, but at the cost of OH-3 getting more Republican.

OH-1: D+4.28
OH-2: R+20.12
OH-3: D+2.43
OH-4: R+12.67
OH-5: R+21.07
OH-6: R+14.65
OH-7: R+13.41
OH-8: R+18.97
OH-9: D+4.45
OH-10: D+1.44
OH-11: D+25.92 (44.2% black by CVAP)
OH-12: D+1.95
OH-13: D+4.31
OH-14: D+3.05
OH-15: D+8.31 (26.2% black by CVAP)

[EastAnglianLefty]

I've tweaked the map to make sure there are districts entirely within Franklin and Cuyahoga: https://davesredistricting.org/join/ef954867-1844-405b-b0d4-1a7fd34a663c

Knock-on consequences are that OH-10 moves out to D+2.4, but at the cost of OH-9 becoming D+3.25, and both OH-12 and OH-15 become securely but not safely Democratic (D+4.2 and D+5.7). However, I'm still not sure my split of Columbus passes muster.

[EastAnglianLefty]

There
This is probably a realistic map of sorts if Democrats flip the supreme court after reading through it.

This is a rule compliant although not super compact but relatively partisan equal(5 Safe D and 10 Safe R)

Democrats might take this especially considering flipped court means Biden midterm. Ryan and Kaptur are kept in relatively safe seats(Kaptur 59% D comp and Ryan at 58% D composite)
Also gives the Cincinatti seat.

I guess if any other seats were to flip it would be Joyce at +5 R composite but that should be relatively secure by now. Safe R
Also Jim Jordans seat is +10 R composite but also takes in the most #resistance areas of all of Ohio so its probably only +11 Trump so more or less the same as the current Ohio 12th. Likely R.

Balderson gets cut along with Chabot.

It seems unlikely that a court map would draw the 5th and 7th districts looping round each other like that. Would a more compact rearrangement there create an extra Dem seat, or a toss-up?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Springfield looks a bit odd in the 6th. Might be worth considering giving that to the 4th and rotating territory via the 9th and the 10th?