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TJ in Oregon
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« on: September 18, 2011, 10:25:26 PM »

I’ve been making random Ohio maps by county for a while now and have been thinking of posting them. I briefly posted one in my signature but otherwise haven’t showed any on this site. Let me know if anyone finds them interesting or whether I should include the county names or not.

Also let me know if anyone has some ideas about other demographics that might be interesting.

I’ll start off with the 2008 Presidential Election since that’s one people know a lot about:

It’s mainly a battle of the northeast and the lakeshore versus everywhere else. The southeast, which is normally very swingy and often determines the outcome of state elections, swung heavily toward McCain. The northwest, which apart from Toledo is normally fairly Republican, had a very soft Republican margin. You’ll see in subsequent maps how different this was from normal.

Other places that stick out: Franklin County (Columbus) was solidly Obama while Hamilton (Cincinnati) and Montgomery (Dayton) were softer Obama Counties. Republicans win Montgomery and Hamilton more often than not. Athens County is very heavily Democratic and this will manifest itself on many maps. The Republican areas that stand out are the upper Miami Valley (the clump of 70%+ McCain counties in the northwest—this area will stand out often) and Holmes County (the Amish—this will also stand out on a lot of maps).
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2011, 10:26:07 PM »

Compare the first map to the 2010 gubernatorial election where John Kasich (R) narrowly defeated Ted Strickland (D):

The biggest thing to notice is that the southeast swung back toward the Democrat this time. Athens County really jumps out. Strickland was doomed, however, because he did terrible in northeast Ohio and Columbus, failing to win either of the swingy counties (Lake and Stark) and even lost Portage County. Geauga and  Medina Counties move even further to the Republicans and Lorain, Summit, and Ashtabula are too close for a Democrat to win statewide with this type of showing.  This election is more polarized by economic issues and less by social issues as the suburban counties are much more Republican. Mercer County is still heavily Republican but the rest of the upper Miami Valley doesn’t stand out. Holmes County is heavily GOP as always. Two suburban Cincinnati Counties (Clermont and Warren) also join the 70%+ GOP ranks.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2011, 10:27:01 PM »

Now, for a random race no one has paid any attention to, the 2010 Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice race between Maureen O’Connor (R) and Eric Brown (D). This was between two sitting justices for the top spot. Ohio’s Supreme Court races are always heavily slanted toward the Republicans and at one point the Democrats controlled 4 of the 5 statewide executive offices and the Republicans simultaneously held all seven Supreme Court seats. Here’s the map:

O’Connor won all 88 counties so it was rather boring. The southeast actually sticks out as the most heavily Democratic area.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2011, 10:27:47 PM »

Here’s the one I’ve already shown (and the only one with names on the counties): Percentage Catholic by county

Noticeable things:
Ohio’s Catholics are concentrated along the lake, in the upper Miami valley, and near Cincinnati and Youngstown. The Miami Valley has two counties (Mercer and Putnam) that are more than 50%. My home county of Erie has more than average. The southeastern and rural central parts of the state have virtually no Catholics and few live in Columbus.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2011, 10:28:18 PM »

Here’s Ohio’s 2004 referendum to ban gay marriage and civil unions (constitutional amendment):

Note: the coloring scheme is centered around 60% not 50%.
The vote passed 87/88 counties, only failing in Athens County, which sticks out a ton compared to the counties around it. The county the ban passed by the lowest margin was actually Franklin (Columbus) rather than Cuyahoga (Cleveland). The areas that stand out for the ban are the Ohio River counties, especially west of Athens, the upper Miami Valley, and Holmes County. Compared to partisan results, the ban did poorly in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas, as well as in normally Republican Geauga County in the northeast and swingy Wood County in the northwest. The ban did much better than Republicans do in the Youngstown area, carrying heavily Democratic Mahoning and Trumbull Counties with over 60%. My home county of Erie also appears more conservative than usual.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2011, 10:28:54 PM »
« Edited: September 18, 2011, 10:44:57 PM by TJ in Cleve »

Now for some economic data, here's median household income (in thousands of dollars per year):

The poorest areas are in the southeast as expected. North-central Ohio is also rather poor, as are Lucas County (Toledo) and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland). Columbus, Cincinnati, and their suburbs are the wealthiest. Delaware County jumps out being the only county with a median household income over $80k a year. The exurban counties around Cleveland are fairly wealthy, Geauga and Medina in particular since those are the exurban counties without any large, poor, industrial cores.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2011, 10:29:31 PM »

This is a more complicated economic map, April 2011 unemployment:

Again the Ohio River counties fair poorly, but this time the pain is also spread across much of the northwest as well. The high unemployment in the northwest is likely an important cause of Obama’s good performance there and whether or not northwest Ohio remains happy with Obama in 2012 will be an important determining factor in the presidential election. The areas that stand out with low unemployment are the metropolitan areas of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Mercer County also stands out on this map, though I’m not sure why. Individual counties that stand out in a bad way are Ottawa in the northwest and Pike and Clinton in the southwest. Clinton County is home to Wilmington, which lost a huge number of jobs when DHL left and was featured in special interest stories in the national news about people coping with economic despair as a community.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2011, 10:30:20 PM »

This next map is the most difficult by far to read, average household size:

This map shows a strong urban/suburban divide with rural areas mostly in between. The Ohio River counties show lower household sizes and are older. Counties with large colleges also show small households. The only county that really jumps out on the large family side is Holmes, home of the Amish.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2011, 10:30:57 PM »
« Edited: September 18, 2011, 10:46:13 PM by TJ in Cleve »

My last map for today is a map of shame: abortions per 10,000 people (Note: This is based on 2007 abortion statistics and 2008 population estimates.):

The areas that jump out immediately are Cuyahoga County and all of northeast Ohio. The other counties with many abortions are Franklin (Columbus), Hamilton (Cincinnati), and Lucas (Toledo). The counties containing poor, urban cores do much worse on this map, including my home in Erie County (Sandusky). The southeastern part of the state has the fewest abortions of any region, particularly Jefferson County (Steubenville) and Lawrence County (Ironton). The upper Miami Valley and Holmes County, the respective Catholic and Amish areas, also show noticeably lower rates. Allen County (Lima) is in the upper Miami Valley but also contains an urban core and has an intermediate rate.
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Sbane
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« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2011, 04:11:40 PM »

This is awesome. Just wanted to let you know. Smiley
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Torie
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« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2011, 04:24:26 PM »

This is awesome. Just wanted to let you know. Smiley

Ditto. TJ is one of our jewels in the crown, he really is. Just a little Indian reference there for you sbane. Smiley
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Chancellor Tanterterg
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« Reply #11 on: September 19, 2011, 07:04:43 PM »

This is awesome. Just wanted to let you know. Smiley
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jimrtex
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« Reply #12 on: September 20, 2011, 04:24:59 AM »

Here’s the one I’ve already shown (and the only one with names on the counties): Percentage Catholic by county

Noticeable things:
Ohio’s Catholics are concentrated along the lake, in the upper Miami valley, and near Cincinnati and Youngstown. The Miami Valley has two counties (Mercer and Putnam) that are more than 50%. My home county of Erie has more than average. The southeastern and rural central parts of the state have virtually no Catholics and few live in Columbus.

Are the rural areas in the NW German?   Is the variation due to colonization efforts and where the colonists came from.  That is the pattern in the Texas Hill Country and also between Houston and San Antonio, where you will have some very Catholic towns and some very Lutheran ones. 

In Cleveland, Croat and Irish?  The southeast would be Scots-Irish with Columbus being an overlay of that, and you had a bit of industrialization in Steubenville and other areas just downstream from Pittsburgh.  Otherwise you could go Adams-Hardin-Carroll and everything southeast as the low percentage.

When I was drawing districts in Columbus, I was surprised at how many of the roads had German names.  It made it seem like Houston.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #13 on: September 20, 2011, 11:06:07 AM »

The Northwest is primarily German, even among non-Catholics. There are a couple counties with very high Lutheran percentages as well, such as Henry County which is majority Lutheran. The German influence stretches over that entire corner of the state, even over to Erie County. The Miami valley was settled by mostly Germans. This accounts for the strip of higher Catholic counties: Shelby, Auglaize, Mercer, Allen, and Putnam. Mercer County was built around the man-made Grand Lake St. Mary's on the Miami. Shelby and Auglaize are less Catholic becuase both have towns further from the major German Catholic settlements and Allen County has a lower percentage because it contains the city of Lima, which has a noticeable black population and more industrialization (ie. people from anywhere).

Nrotheast Ohio has larger Eastern European immigrant populations from Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Lithuania, and a handful of other places, along with some Italians, Irish, and Germans. I sort of wish I had a way of looking at the distribution within Cuyahoga County because I suspect it is strongly skewed with a much higher Catholic percentage on the west side where all these groups except the Italians settled. I may try to write something about the East-West rivalry in the Cleveland area later, but there is a considerable social difference. There's an old saying in Cleveland that the Northeast ends and the Midwest begins at the Cuyahoga River.

The Ohio river likely has higher percentages because of industrialization in general, but Jefferson County specifically is a bit different because Steubenville has Franciscan University.
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Torie
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« Reply #14 on: September 20, 2011, 11:21:54 AM »

I think Euclid used to be heavily Hungarian of all things.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #15 on: September 24, 2011, 02:30:47 PM »

Here is the 2010 Congressional election by county and by district:
This map has the vote in counties containing multiple districts totaled:

And this one just has lines drawn in at the loss of the total county vote:

This election was a complete blood bath where the Republicans cleaned house in pretty much every area normally competitive, with the possible exception of the southeast. Northwest Ohio was very heavily Republican, quite the turn-around from the ’08 presidential election (I haven’t made an ’08 House map yet). Large parts of the upper Miami valley were over 80% for the GOP and several counties where McCain won somewhere in the mid-50s were over 70%. Marcy Kaptur, while still winning comfortably, did terrible for a Democrat everywhere in her district other than Lucas County, only winning Erie and her Lorain County areas by small margins despite containing some heavily Democratic towns. Steve LaTourette also cleaned up all his marginal areas to win comfortably. You can clearly see the east/west division within Cuyahoga County with Kucinich only taking 53% of the vote in OH-10. Overall, the Democrats only managed low-60s in Cuyahoga County. The southeast was a little more reluctant to vote for Republican Congressmen than presidential candidates, but the GOP managed to get a slim victory in both seats.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #16 on: September 26, 2011, 02:52:45 PM »

Here is the 2008 Congressional election by county and by district:
This map has the vote in counties containing multiple districts totaled:

And this one just has lines drawn in at the loss of the total county vote:


Compare this election to the maps above. This is a bloodbath in the opposite direction as four ConservaDems are elected to seats they don't end up holding after 2010. There is a characteristic backwards-C shape of Democratic areas common to many Ohio elections: along Lake Erie, the eastern border, and along the Ohio River. The southeast is very heavily Democratic. In all of OH-6 and OH-18, Holmes and Knox are the only Republican counties. OH-16 was nearly swept by Boccieri despite containing several normally Republican counties. Kaptur and Sutton both won every county by comfortable margins. Ryan carried his part of Mahoning County with 87%.

Still, the western half of the state was heavily Republican, as was Steve LaTourette's district.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #17 on: October 20, 2011, 11:24:27 PM »
« Edited: October 20, 2011, 11:29:59 PM by TJ in Cleve »

Here’s a more complicated Ohio religion demographics map. I broke it into four groups: Catholic (green), Mainline Protestant (blue), Evangelical Protestant (red), and other (black). The data is from the ARDA Database and uses the ARDA’s designations for what falls under each group. The coloring is done so that the brighter each color is the more of that group is present.


There are a few drawbacks to this mapping technique, many religious groups do not keep detailed membership records so the map likely underestimates evangelicals and overestimates Catholics. I also disregarded the “unaffiliated” persons because it is nearly impossible to tell what their identity is. The percentage of “unaffiliated” persons tended to be highest in rural evangelical areas so I am disinclined to call them nonreligious or other.

The Amish are considered evangelical (apparently) so Holmes County is bright, bright red.

In general, the further south you go the more evangelical an area is, while mainline Protestants are concentrated in the northern part of the state. Near the lake, virtually all of the Protestants belong to mainline denominations.

The intensity of color in Catholic areas can be slightly misleading for a number of reasons. First, large urban areas tended not only to have more Catholics but also noticeably fewer Protestants than rural areas with a similar Catholic percentage would have. Second, green seems to mask red better than blue so the green appears a bit more intense when the Protestants are Evangelical.

It’s easy to tell why Southwest Ohio is so conservative from this map: there are very few mainline Protestants. The map has a whole lot of green, red, and brown in that area.

In the Northwest, I’d like to point out Henry County. It’s colored purple because it has roughly the same number of Mainline and Evangelical Protestants, but both are mostly Lutheran (ELCA=mainline and LCMS=evangelical).
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jimrtex
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« Reply #18 on: October 21, 2011, 12:25:06 AM »

Here’s a more complicated Ohio religion demographics map. I broke it into four groups: Catholic (green), Mainline Protestant (blue), Evangelical Protestant (red), and other (black). The data is from the ARDA Database and uses the ARDA’s designations for what falls under each group. The coloring is done so that the brighter each color is the more of that group is present.


Are Pickaway and Champaign and Ashland distinct, or is it simply a case of relatively few Catholics, and balance between evangelical and mainline Protestants?

Why is Delaware so Catholic?  Would it have been so say 30 years ago when there would have been less suburban growth?  (eg is it like Putnam and Mercer with an addition of suburbanites, or is it like Franklin with fewer Blacks, who tend to be Protestant.

Totally unrelated: why are street blocks in Cleveland so long?

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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #19 on: October 21, 2011, 11:09:09 AM »
« Edited: October 21, 2011, 11:18:42 AM by TJ in Cleve »

Here’s a more complicated Ohio religion demographics map. I broke it into four groups: Catholic (green), Mainline Protestant (blue), Evangelical Protestant (red), and other (black). The data is from the ARDA Database and uses the ARDA’s designations for what falls under each group. The coloring is done so that the brighter each color is the more of that group is present.


Are Pickaway and Champaign and Ashland distinct, or is it simply a case of relatively few Catholics, and balance between evangelical and mainline Protestants?

Why is Delaware so Catholic?  Would it have been so say 30 years ago when there would have been less suburban growth?  (eg is it like Putnam and Mercer with an addition of suburbanites, or is it like Franklin with fewer Blacks, who tend to be Protestant.

Totally unrelated: why are street blocks in Cleveland so long?



Pickaway, Coshocton, Harrison, and most of the other bright blue southeastern counties are mainly Methodist. Ashland is roughly evenly split between Methodists and Lutherans and has surprisingly few Evangelicals despite being the home of an Evangelical University. Champaign is a mix of lots of different mainline denominations.

As for Delaware County, I’m not completely sure which the answer is but I have a decent way of guessing. There are two main population centers in Delaware County, the Columbus suburbs in the south and the city of Delaware. Of the four Catholic Churches in the county (20,003 Catholics and only four churches), only one is in the city of Delaware. The church in the city of Delaware appears to be the largest one, however. So my guess is that before suburban sprawl Delaware County was probably more Catholic than all the counties around it but not extraordinarily Catholic, more like Wyandot or Wood Counties rather than like Putnam or Mercer. As far as the sprawl is concerned, it alone wouldn’t explain why Delaware County is much more Catholic than the other exurban Columbus counties, Licking and Fairfield, but I do think it contributed.

I would guess the reason why Cleveland blocks are so long is that most our major streets radiate east or west outward from downtown and there is little reason to build many major cross-streets between them. For example, on the east side, Carnegie, Cedar, Chester, and Euclid are all major east-west streets between downtown and University Circle. There’s really not much in between and not much reason to travel perpendicular to those streets.
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nclib
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« Reply #20 on: October 21, 2011, 05:10:40 PM »

Good maps, TJ.

Why are Mercer and Putnam so Catholic and still so Republican?
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #21 on: October 21, 2011, 05:52:34 PM »

Good maps, TJ.

Why are Mercer and Putnam so Catholic and still so Republican?
Mercer and Putnam were settled by Germans rather than the later waves of immigrants that were targeted more for discrimination and account for most US Catholics. This area also never experienced the extent of industrialization and unionization of many heavily Catholic areas, making many of them ancestrally Democratic.

As a whole Ohio Catholics are slightly more Republican than Ohio voters in general despite living in more Democratic areas on average. According to the 2008 Gallup exit poll, McCain actually received 51% of Ohio Catholic vote.

Basically, these areas show how rural Catholics would vote without unions, industry, or immigration as issues. On the DRA, you can actually find a whole bunch of precincts in the rural part of Mercer Countywhere McCain won ~85% of the vote. In Putnam, it isn't quite as extreme but Putnam also doesn't have a city the size of Celina with precinct that McCain only got... gasp...58% o the vote in.
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nclib
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« Reply #22 on: October 21, 2011, 06:52:17 PM »

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I think that has more to do with the fact that there are far more blacks (usu. Protestant) than Hispanics (usu. Catholic) in Ohio. IIRC, white Catholics were still quite a bit more Democratic than white Protestants in Ohio.
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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #23 on: October 21, 2011, 07:14:31 PM »

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I think that has more to do with the fact that there are far more blacks (usu. Protestant) than Hispanics (usu. Catholic) in Ohio. IIRC, white Catholics were still quite a bit more Democratic than white Protestants in Ohio.
You are correct.

I tend to suspect this is mostly due to other factors beside religion considering a huge percentage of Ohio's Catholics live in pretty solidly Democratic counties.

I wonder if there is an effect on voting to live in a religiously homogenous area? That might contribute the voting patterns of Mercer and Putnam Counties (which vote very similarly to Holmes, the Amish/Mennonite stronghold).

Otherwise the best answer I can give is that Mercer and Putnam didn't experience as much industrialization and unionization. Neither county has a really large urban core, though Celina isn't negligible.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #24 on: October 21, 2011, 07:39:13 PM »

Religion being just a signifier in that particular electoral context.
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