US House Redistricting: Ohio

[Torie]

Thanks guys for the generous words. I appreciate it.

[Torie]

Here is my first cut at the Cincy-Dayton conurbation carve up. I lighted the colors up (and changed them in fact) so that you can see more clearly the game of musical chairs (the territory CD's gained or lost is in a slightly different shade from the territory that does not switch into another CD).

OH-01, Chabot's CD, is at a -2% GOP PVI, and needs help, but all the help he can get since he is trapped by Boehner's CD, Boehner's home, and being in the SE corner of the state, is to simply expand into the most GOP territory within reach, where in which he will perform well to boot vis a vis the partisan baseline hopefully. So he gets another 122,000 folks by grabbing the most GOP and highest SES voters in the NE corner of Hamilton County, and then moves into Warren's SW corner for even more Pubbie, albeit lower SES voters. He does not absorb one Dem town in Hamilton that is about a third black. Boehner's OH-08 dips down from his hometown in the SE corner of Butler to pick it up. I would like to get Chabot to at least a +4% GOP PVI, with 5% being better.

Schmidt in her OH-02 CD, having dropped a lot of prime precincts to Chabot, and dropping some more in Warren to Turner in OH-03 (see below), has thus taken a big hit to her +13% GOP PVI CD. She replaces the lost territory with solid GOP Highland County, somewhat along the lines of those Hamilton County precincts that she lost perhaps, although far less in population, but far short of the uber GOP precincts that she lost in Warren. The shortfall is taken up by her expanding to the east, taking in a mixed bag of marginal, marginal GOP, and solidly GOP, but not uber GOP counties (well she has all but a couple of precincts in smallish Jackson County added, with a 60% McCain percentage, so Jackson just crossed the finish line into the uber GOP zone). I would be happy if she ended up with about a +7% GOP PVI.

Turner (OH-03) picks up about half or a bit more of the Dem precincts that Boehner sucked up in Montgomery County in his OH-08, so his already thin GOP PVI of 4% drops some more, and then he loses solidly, albeit smallish Highland County to boot. But he gets another slug of uber GOP Warren. Will it be enough? I hope so. I would like to see Turner clock in with a 5% GOP PVI.  

And then we have Mr. Boehner in OH-08. He starts out with a GOP PVI of 15%. Losing those Dem precincts in Montgomery, probably pushes it up to 16%, maybe a tad higher. But he loses about 25 or so very uber GOP precincts in Mercer (his share of the county was about 2/3 and the whole county went 72% for McCain (I think it is heavily Mennonite, and I wish JS were here to confirm that), so maybe he is down close to 13-14% or so. And then he takes in that Dem town in Hamilton. Now he is down to 12.5% maybe, maybe a tad lower. And then he takes in almost all of marginal Clark County (except for a few what are probably solidly GOP precincts at its eastern extremity, but one can be surprised), with 65,000 voters, about 20% of his new CD, and maybe his PVI drops to about 9-10 or so - still a tad "too high," but frankly, there are just not any other Dem or "Demish" precincts for him to take in that given all the considerations, that are actually available within reach anyway.

It will be interesting to see how close I am in my guesses about the PVI's of these CD's. I suspect I am within about 1 to 1.5 points of guessing it right. I have played this game enough to sort of just "know" as it were. But I could be surprised. Stay tuned.

Oh yes, I suspect that the remaining GOP PVI for the 4 Columbus chop CD's will still be around 7 or so. At least I hope that is the case!

[Torie]

Oh, and here is the whole map (or most of it), lightened up, to see how I moved the pawns on the chessboard, in case anyone might be interested in seeing the "big picture." Yes I know, who could be as fascinated as I am by all of this?. Nobody of course!   But I don't mind; if I get joy in doing it, that is its own reward - and I do!

[Torie]

[Torie]

Wow this is coming together very well. I'm very impressed. Looks like you have the numbers needed to finish the deed. Of course it could also lead to a 13-3 map in the wrong direction. But no, you have protected the pubbies against that pretty well. Let's see if the legislature does just as good of a job.

Thank you. They will have my map of course, and I will defend it to the death!    All my maps will be pushed.

The next chapter is to map out how the four CD's will chop Columbus. I will post a map of how I plan to chop Columbus because that is quite a fascinating task to do it right. It is tricky, because there is a traffic jam as to where the incumbents live, with 3 within about 5 miles of each other. Tiberi and Stivers (with Stivers in a heavily Dem precinct, living in a charming old house), are within about 15 blocks of each other. So how to do it right, without giving incumbents entirely new CD's. It is what we call in the trade a "balancing act."

Turner in Montgomery creates a blockade that does not allow Boenher to transfer some of his Pubbie strength into the Columbus chop CD's, because to do that, he would have to cut deep into Montgomery, and then Turner into Greene and on into Franklin to join in the chop , but that can't happen, because the incumbent in OH-07 lives just across the Montgomery County line to the east, and Turner's CD is not going to be chopped that way, and on and on. Schmidt had to suck up 5 black wards in Columbus to get Chabot's numbers up to where they needed to be. So her share of Hamilton is now about 2-1 Dem.

And oh yes: Sutton and Bocerri's (sp) homes are now both in OH-13, to create another impediment in challenging the Pubbie in OH-16.  

But the most important thing, is that I think I got my color scheme about the best that it can be now. Map decor is important too!  

The map below depicts the precinct switch outs between OH-01 and OH-02 in Hamilton.

[Torie]

Yes, indeed, but even more important than that, is that they would like their Pubbie numbers up. As much as possible, Stivers and Tiberi will keep their territory in Franklin that they actually do well in. But there will need to be some shift, because Stivers needs to punch north to make it all work. Walls are created by where the Dem precincts are, and where Tiberi and Stivers live.

Anyway, here is the story of what I did to OH-03. Turner took about two thirds of the remaining Dem precincts in Montgomery he did not have before from OH-08 (maybe 2-1 Dem or so), and lost GOP Highland County, but took most of the rest of Warren, which gave him a net gain about about 2.5 Pubbie points. Boehner losing those Montgomery precincts allowed him to such up all of Clark County, which was his job in preparation for the Columbus chop by the four CD's on deck to effect that deed.

[Torie]

Schmidt's OH-02 CD is in final form. It won't change.

I would be interested in how you would draw the state. In any event, we have different philosophies I think. I don't care much who represents a +5% GOP CD. The Dem will either be house broken, and a moderate, or will be gone in short order. If that means means a few weak Pubbies go down the drain in the meantime, that is probably for the best. If Schmidt can't win a +9% GOP PVI CD, then good riddance to her!  

I suspect most of the maps will be drawn just about the way I drew them. I try to balance carefully the competing considerations. I doubt if Wilson will run, but it would be easy to dump his home into OH-06 by shifting a precinct or two, but I am told that Johnson is weak too. In any event, I am not going to shave down a GOP CD elsewhere to over Pubbie a CD to prop up a weak incumbent. That is just dumb in my opinion. I need each and every Pubbie I saved to make the Columbus chop reasonably safe. I am just not going to shave down the Columbus chop CD's much below a 5% GOP PVI. That would be the dumbest thing to do of all in my opinion. So I won't do it!  

Here is a map where Charlie baby has been moved to OH-06. See how easy that was? Now of course if I did this, I will get posts about how that threatens Johnson, and I need to Pubbie up that CD more with unavailable Pubbies, waving some magic wand, that does not wreak havoc elsewhere. Or maybe I will be told again that some incumbent Pubbie just needs to be affirmatively tossed to the dogs.  Maybe I need to move Wilson into Boehner's CD!  Or I will be told again that the map I am drawing which actually makes possible the GOP goals here in a reasonable way, is impossible, a claim that is clearly errant in my opinion. What I have not yet been told is how to do any of this in a more effective manner that meets any sensible objection function as to the purpose of this map - which is to influence public policy in a Pubbie direction.  Isn't that the purpose of a GOP gerrymander - the only sensible purpose?

[Torie]

OK, I will make the adjustment. It does not move the partisan numbers at all. Drawing an intelligent map takes a lot of work, as I assume you know.

These fly by maps just won't cut it. How much time do you think I spent on my Ohio map? 
And the thing is, when I sell them, I will I think be able to defend them in detail, and if some pet Pubbie wants special handling, that f's things up,  I will make waves about it. I intend to cause trouble on this one, if need be.

[Torie]

Jordon (OH-04) in my map just sucked up in a gratifyingly efficient manner (a nice little prong to the SE from his SE corner of his new CD), about 90,000 residents from Stivers' CD, few of which are in precincts that are  more than about 30% McCain, and most heavily black. We shall see if he can take the hit, but the balance of his CD basically hates Dems, so I suspect he can. It was an elongated sliver of course into Stivers' CD, leaving everything else in his old CD (what is left of it) in place. Now Stivers' CD will jut north like a knife to get the population he needs. Franklin has its precincts well organized in spreadsheet form, so I should be able to do all of this with some alacrity, without missing a precinct in the sense of putting it in the "wrong" CD, as I "see" what is "right" and "wrong."

[Torie]

Yes, after playing this game for awhile, typically you do have a sea of marginal territory, a Pubbie zone to push the PVI up to where you want it, and sometimes the Pubbie zone is strong enough to absorb some hostile Dem town or two. OH-04 as I am drawing it, is the exception to the rule. It has almost no marginal territory at all: outside its share of Franklin, Dems are hated, and inside its share of Franklin, Pubbies are hated. So after OH-04 has absorbed this so far in Franklin from OH-15: 18,230 McCain, 39,175 Obama, McCain percentage 31.76%, it still has a GOP PVI of 11%! Which means that since the four CD's in the chop collectively have a 5% GOP PVI,  OH-07 is going to able to do only about a quarter of the work of Dem neutralization.

The problem with this is that the Dem areas are all in the south, in both OH-15 and OH-12, and while OH-04 has about done just enough to get OH-15 over a 4% GOP PVI (most of the under 40% McCain precincts in OH-15 have now been absorbed), OH-12 just has oceans of heavily black precincts; in fact all the yellow that you see in the map below as far east as the NE corner of the brown jut on the map, that reflects what OH-07 is doing under the map drawn 10 years ago, is heavily black east of the blue band, and going north all the way to about the latitude that the northern edge that my blue zone currently has. Now I know why Columbus is so Dem. It's black! There is no way that OH-07 is going to be able to cope with it.

So, Stivers is going to have to have an almost entirely new CD, losing the southern end of his old CD south of whatever links OH-04 to the Dem zone,  plus Madison County, to OH-07.  All he will have is his home precinct, a band running to the north into a friendlier GOP zone, and then take in the NW corner of Franklin, the west end of Delaware, and then into my unassigned zone. There simply is no other way to do it. The Pubbies that are needed to offset Columbus are mostly to the north and northwest, not to the south and east.

In short, it's a nightmare. The CD with the Pubbies (oh-04) is to the NW, and the Dems to be absorbed are to the SE of the Columbus area. It just sucks!

[Torie]

Columbus:
4. Jordan- run this one straight into Columbus to crack it. I had no precinct data, so I just guessed he would get 219,000 people who vote 66% Obama (I tried to give him more of the black areas since the rest of his district is safer). I also think (though I am not totally sure) that the southern part of Franklin County is more heavily Democratic than the northern part.

15. Stivers- I think he’ll end up with most of Delaware County because everything will have to expand to the northeast. Other than that I’m not really sure. I think I guessed his Franklin County share would be about 58% Obama.

7. Austria- give him a little more of Columbus otherwise the same same. I guessed his Franklin County part would be about 64% Obama.

12. Tiberi- he’ll have to gain some part of Knox, Morrow, Richland, and Ashland counties to make his seat safer.

I realize my Columbus thoughts are pretty much useless and must admit I know practically nothing about the geography of that city.

Tiberi lives in Delaware County, so Stivers can't get that

No Tiberi lives in Columbus. I know his address from a title company, and his bio says he lives in Columbus to boot so the home he owns, is the one in which he resides for voting purposes.

[Torie]

Yes, it is either that, or having OH-07 take that territory to the south of the OH-04 thrust into Franklin. The latter makes for a prettier map, so it is the latter I shall do I think.

[Torie]

how come no one has commented on my maps on page 13? It seems like I'm on everyone's ignore list. My maps on page 13 are probably the most logical because they are the most similar to the current maps and both parties would probably like the map too.

Make them prettier, and I will look at them. The dull tones of the maps I see (other than mine
of course ), are too painful for my eyes. But I will take a look at your map. But I am an arrogant SOB, and will probably be critical. Do you really want that?  

[Torie]

Horrible - just horrible!  Do you think the Ohio Pubbies are that dumb, or into masochism, or what, Brittain33?

[Torie]

Let me throw some lighter fluid onto the fire: Pat Tiberi is suddenly talking about running for the Senate. What happens if he vacates his marginal Columbus-area seat?

His GOP PVI needs to go to a 5 from a 4, and Stivers from a 5 to a 4.

[Torie]

The final assault by the Pubbies on Columbus is about to begin. Below my stat matrix, is how I plan to allocate the Pubbie spoils between OH-12, OH-15 and OH-04. If Tiberi runs for the Senate, I would recommend flipping the Stivers (OH-15) and Tiberi (OH-12) percentages. The Pubbie blitzkrieg on Columbus has become a bit thin, but not nearly as thin as the Nazi's assault on Stalingrad, where both their fuel (WWII strategy on both sides was largely about moving the pawns around either to obtain or cut off oil; without oil, Hitler was dead meat, and he was cut off from oil, and became dead meat shortly before nukes would have done him in), with his mechanical vehicles and air power dangerously depleted in the face of the coming winter.

If anyone thinks my divvying up of the Pubbie numbers between OH-15, OH-12 and OH-04 is off base, let me know this weekend, because I intend to package a final map (with excel spreadsheet stats this weekend), and then send it off to the Ohio Pubbie power brokers. And I intend to push this map hard, and if ignored, make noise about it, pushing all the power buttons of which I am aware. I worked hard on this map, and intend to do all in my power to see that it is enacted. I intend in short, to try to make a difference. I have pretty complete flexibility on this final divvy up, and thus am open to ideas on it.

A couple of notes. First, I shipped 120  Pubbie basis points (1.2%) from OH-02 to OH-10 vis a vis my prior map, a rather significant change really. I did that, because excising Charlie Wilson from OH-10 was just a bridge too far to me. It is one thing, to dump Sutton and that defeated incumbent in my OH-16 (Brocelli or something) into OH-13 (and away from my newly drawn CD, OH-16, which visits all kind of fascinating neighborhoods in west Cuyahoga County), just by jiggling a bunch of lines that were already well, erose to the max. It is another to do a spite strip into Belmont County to F Charlie Wilson by shoving his home out of OH-10 and into OH-06. Mr. Wilson is  no doubt a nice chap (I suppose morticians (Wilson's trade) have to be nice to stay in business, although all such places would be out of business if the populace had my sense of how to handle the disposing of human corpses, but I digress). Such a spite poke into Belmont is just too obvious, too mean, and just well, just too infra dig. So I pumped the 100 plus Pubbie basis points into OH-10 from OH-02, just to help Mr. Wilson make the "right" decision, in a gentle and caring way. May he rest in peace.

I also discovered the "prison precinct" in Madison County, right on the Clark County border. I will put it up later. Suffice it to say for now, that by one click of the mouse, I dropped it into Boehner's OH-08, which with 300 voters voting 2-1 for McCain changed nothing for him. But with 5,200 residents, a majority of color, what it did do, is allow his CD to be stripped of his Mercer County precincts, which went right into OH-04.  Since OH-04 is doing the heavy lifting on the Columbus chop, that meant that 20 Pubbie basis points were pumped straight into Columbus - 20 basis points that were/are sorely needed.

Yes, again the assault on Columbus is thin, but to give the Pubbie assault more weaponry, would mean to start doing a gerrymander of the precincts between OH-02 and OH-07, with at least one and maybe two additional county chops, and I made a judgement call just not to do that. As with everything in life, map drawing has to be a careful balancing test, to get the best possible product. Hard work, and good judgment, and knowledge, are the key to excellence in any endeavor. There is no substitute. There just isn't! That has been my experience, and that approach has worked for me. Just one old man's opinion.





One note about the zoom of Columbus, and OH-07 in particular (the brown CD). The darker brown represents OH-07's pickup of former OH-15 precincts, about 50-50 McCain/Obama overall, or about +3% GOP PVI. The mid brown is OH-07's existing precincts. The light brown precincts are OH-07's visit to Pubbie hell: black precincts none of which are above 25% McCain, and a majority of which are single digit McCain. OH-07 sucked up four black wards in Columbus. That was about all the punishment OH-07 could stand. OH-04 is now slated to wrap about the southern terminus of the dark blue strip (OH-15, and the most southern precinct therein the precinct that hosts the residence of Stivers), go east to Bexley, but not into it (yes Bexley is 2-1 Obama, but OH-04 has more pressing work to do), and then all the way up to and including that white box, which is another nest of single digit McCain precincts.

The final stat matrix chart will show the change in PVI's in each CD. That is another thing one must be sensitive to - the PVI delta function when it comes to Pubbie incumbents. If the change is drastic, then I intend if possible to give the Pubbie with more hostile territory than the Pubbie was used to, a bit of a pad - if I can.

Oh, and I deliberately kept OH-02 and Schmidt out of Athens County, a county which hosts a state university, and of course, is, you guessed it, 2-1 Dem. Schmidt (the shrill and controversial congresswoman holding OH-02 at the moment) would do about as well there, as Fred Phelps would do in Greenwich Village. Just no. No!  A more invisible Pubbie would do better.

[Torie]

Some mathematical analyses I've read suggest that it's best to put the really hard D areas in with the hardest R areas. Hard D areas will never cross over for a primary challenge, and as long as there are enough hard R areas, then the D can't win a general election either. If that analysis is correct, the maybe Athens should go to OH-2.

You don't think a Bachmann/Schmidt would suffer disproportionate erosion in a university town, vis a vis a Portman, or Rogers, or Ryan, or even say my congresscritter, Campbell, at least to the extent you are not talking about a hard left University? Particularly in these times, when the status quo is really, really f'ing the young, and all we need is the right messenger to get the truth out? Folks from Athens won't be getting those prestigious federal jobs, the number of which has nearly doubled under Obama, and late term Bush. So they don't have that incentive. Most of them are destined to be middle to lower middle class "slugs," to put it brutally, but honestly. Does that make any sense to you Muon2?

[Torie]

Wow, you did a number on my city. If the state adopts it, I will love to hate that map for eternity. Gotta commend you on that Torie, it's amazing work. You must've put days upon days into just Columbus.

I think I'm still in Tiberi's district.

I haven't drawn his CD yet!   But if you live east of the line which you can draw north and south of the western terminus of Genoa township in Delaware County, you will be in OH-12. Of that much I am sure.

Thanks for the kind words btw. I am proud of all my maps, but proudest of this one, because it took the most creativity and thought, and I did it carefully from step one based on my experience (and missteps) in drawing prior maps. One needs a plan, and one needs to know the numbers, or one will just go into the ditch, and produce garbage really.

[Torie]

Folks from Athens won't be getting those prestigious federal jobs, the number of which has nearly doubled under Obama, and late term Bush.

What federal jobs are you talking about that have doubled in number? Total civilian employment is up through 2009 (presumably on Bush's last budget?) when the data series ends but not that dramatically, and after declines. So that can't be what you mean.

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/ExecutiveBranchSince1940.asp

I heard it from Fox News on Greta, from some chappie with charts and stuff who seemed quite on top of his game. I am not sure however what the exact start date was for the doubling thing I admit. Anyway, it please don't confuse me with the "facts" this late at night Brittain33, whatever they might be. Empirical wars are just so labor intensive. Thanks in advance! Caio.

[Torie]

How is Stivers screwed again? Too much rural territory?  Somebody has to take it, and the only issue is how it is shared between OH-15 and OH-12.  The alternative, is the risk goes up that one or the other seats, or both, might go Dem in the general. I think the Pubbies would rather Stivers or Tiberi lose in a primary, than one of them lose to a Dem in the general. In the meantime, I need to figure out where my error(s) is/are. That might influence the map a bit. There is no way either Oh-12 or OH-15 will be allowed to be significantly more Pubbie than OH-04 or OH-07 for example, which is what my numbers have now, with the embeded errors.

In the meantime, I think this map is so beautiful and compelling that I would be shocked if it were not adopted, in substantially my form. 

[Torie]

How is Stivers screwed again? Too much rural territory?  Somebody has to take it, and the only issue is how it is shared between OH-15 and OH-12.  The alternative, is the risk goes up that one or the other seats, or both, might go Dem in the general. I think the Pubbies would rather Stivers or Tiberi lose in a primary, than one of them lose to a Dem in the general. In the meantime, I need to figure out where my error(s) is/are. That might influence the map a bit. There is no way either Oh-12 or OH-15 will be allowed to be significantly more Pubbie than OH-04 or OH-07 for example, which is what my numbers have now, with the embeded errors.

In the meantime, I think this map is so beautiful and compelling that I would be shocked if it were not adopted, in substantially my form.  

Stivers could very easily lose a primary in that district.  I actually think many Central Ohio Republicans in the legislature would rather try to keep Stivers and Tiberi safe from a primary challenge by a RURUAL tea-party type (while still giving them some chance of winning the general) than guarantee that the seats stay in Republican hands and risk a Congressman from farm country.  I suspect Jordan and Latta will end up with much of that rural territory.  It's a valiant effort, that much is certain, but if Republicans try to limit the Dems to three seats and that's the only effective way to handle Franklin County, than the Pubbies are going to end up creating a dummymander on their hands, imo (because I doubt they'll choose this map, even though it does its job extremely well).  

This very cycle, Arkansas Dixiecrats Democrats have decided to screw the best interests of the party and try to enact a pathetic dummymander, just to prevent the state from potentially having an African-American Congressman.

Well, assuming my mathematical errors are not with the quad chop (and the errors are probably elsewhere), then the problem will substantially go away, to the extent it is a problem (I don't think it is really at all, but whatever). This is because in order to get OH-07's and OH-04's GOP PVI 50 to 100 basis points higher than OH-15's and OH-12's GOP PVI, CH-04 will retreat back somewhat out of Franklin, picking up more rural precincts, and OH-07 will give up some of its uber Dem precincts, in favor of less Dem precincts, in a tradeout with OH-12, so that OH-12's GOP PVI goes down, and OH-07's goes up.

[Torie]

We have a ballot box stuffing issue! And the Pubbies did it at two and a half times the rate the Dems did! And here I thought that is was the Dems who were the specialists in vote fraud.  What happened?    I suspect I counted some county twice or something. I will figure it out. It is not due to a double count in Franklin. My numbers there reconcile within a few hundred votes.

What a nightmare that was, to keep each precinct in Franklin in the right one of four potential CD's. I finally had to have a worksheet, with a column of all the precincts, and then put the returns for each precinct in the right cell under the column for the CD to which it was assigned, with whatever CD it was in being in the same row (so that each CD column had a lot of blacks for rows in which the subject precincts where in another CD). That way, I made sure no precincts were missed, and none double assigned. In the end, that was the only way to do it, without ending up with a lot of errors. The problem was that most of the chopping was in the city of Columbus rather than between towns, and Columbus has about 520 precincts, so the potential for making errors was considerable.

Addendum: I have deleted the erroneous old stats, and put up the correct ones. The remaining tiny error was one of which I was aware, and is in Franklin County, and represents about 1,000 unallocated federal votes (2-1 Obama), plus no doubt data entry errors by myself for two or three precincts. Other than that, the numbers now all match.

The big error was in OH-04's PVI, as you can see. Which is good news for the Pubbies, because the error all translated almost into excess GOP PVI for the two existing major Columbus CD's, OH-12 and OH-15. That means OH-04 will stage a rather major retreat from Franklin County, to get a bit more than five points back. The remainder of the changes I want to make are rather minor. Of most interest, is that the corrected numbers have OH-10 losing 50 basis points of GOP PVI, and I got spoiled with its high number, and want to get it back up to 6.5% GOP PVI. I will do that, or something close, by having OH-10 take the rest of Lawrence County, and have OH-02 punch into - yes you guessed it - Athens County! Athens will be the chop county, with OH-02 taking a small morsel out of it.

And oh yes, I am going to have OH-08 punch into Madison County a bit more to take some marginal precincts in a town there, and lose a few heavily GOP precincts to OH-04. That will pump a few more Pubbie basis points into OH-12 and OH-15 at the end of the day, maybe about 20 basis points or so. (I might also move a few precincts around (if I can maintain clean lines), to get OH-05 at or above 5% GOP PVI. I have a plan to do that too if the population numbers otherwise work.)

Other than that, we are done!  This map has proven I think to be huge success for the Pubbies. It is almost a no brainer really when you think about it. The odds are very high that it will enacted into law, in close to this form. There is no other way to draw it that works nearly as well in my not very humble at all opinion.

 

[Torie]

Ohio is finally finished.  

The option below assumes Tiberi in OH-12 runs for re-election. The post below has a slightly adjusted map, where he does not, showing how the chop in Richland and Franklin are adjusted to get the GOP PVI up in OH-12 if it is an open seat. By mixing and matching the Richland and Franklin chops, one can move about 75 basis points (0.75%) between OH-12 and OH-15, or something in between, without making the map look gross.

It turns out that the Columbus chop is eminently doable, practical, and quite safe for the Pubbies. GOP PVI's above 5% mean that what you have is a quite safe GOP seat, particularly if a GOP incumbent who is not a nebbish is ensconced therein.

[Torie]

And here are the stat and map adjustments if OH-12 is going to be an open seat.

[Torie]

Don't think it'll happen, but we shall see soon enough.

You predict the GOP will toss a potential Pubbie CD in excess of a 5% GOP PVI into the trash can eh, along with a Pubbie incumbent if Tiberi does not retire, eh?  Yes, indeed, we shall see!


Moving right along, are you not in any event absolutely inspired that I made OH-12 into this absolutely handsome nearly square yellow box on the map?  I just love geometry - always have. I got the top grade in my high school geometry class. It came as naturally to me as toking really.