US House Redistricting: Ohio

[TJ in Oregon]

Well, I managed to get the part about Faber right.

[TJ in Oregon]

Maybe it would be better to cut into Greene County? Yellow Springs is pretty heavily Democratic.

[TJ in Oregon]

It's obviously not illegal under federal law (as Texas and Georgia proved). It might be illegal in some states under state laws (apparently it is in Colorado), but if the referendum can make the ballot it clearly isn't in Ohio.

Even if it were illegal in Ohio, the referendum would be on a constitutional amendment, so it doesn't matter. The constitution trumps the law.

[TJ in Oregon]

I like the competition proposal map for the most part with a couple caveats:

1. The Lake/Geauga to Trumbull district looks nice on paper but is really ugly in reality because most of the people are concentrated at the ends of it in two different metro areas. Unfortunately this is a difficult one to draw no matter what way you go, but this way you end up splitting the Mahoning Valley metro area pretty badly. It looks clean on a map and clean by county lines but it isn't actually clean.

2. Columbus is a blatant competitiveness gerrymander. The Columbus CD leaves out areas close to the city center in the City of Columbus to instead cover outlying suburbs. 7 and 13 need to loose the arms into each other. 13 should start in Downtown Columbus and first cover neighboring areas within the city before moving on to outer suburbs.

3. The Dayton area is a Democratic gerrymander. If CD 8 needs to take an arm into part of the Dayton metro, the drawers should at least pretend to make it shaped reasonably instead of an arm right through Beavercreek. CD 3 needs to loose the extraneous arm into Springfield. Springfield is not part of the Dayton metro area, which doesn't mean it can't be in the Dayton CD, but the entire CD shouldn't be configured just to find a way to put Springfield into it.

[TJ in Oregon]

Metro areas are not part of the OH referendum. IMO they are only slightly removed from the squishy subject of communities of interest. The referendum amendment would consider county and municipal lines. It also will consider competitiveness and representational fairness and how that is weighted can drive the choices in a map. They were given equal weight with geography in the competition and that resulted in all the specific choices that TJ notes.

I think you are showing just how a competitiveness criterion acts as a defacto Democratic gerrymander here. In order to meet it, the map drawers will gerrymander certain areas, like the places I noted, by choosing adjacent areas with much less geographic connection in order to turn what would otherwise be Republican-favoring seats into competitive ones. This is done in an obvious way in CDs 3,7, and 14 and to a lesser extent with CD 9 (though Lorain County doesn't really fit well anywhere).

Oh, and one other thing, the map drawers really need to pick which corner of Hamilton County to chop off and stick with it. The tendril going down the eastern side is a bit ridiculous.

[TJ in Oregon]

I like it Torie. You did a good job of keeping communities of interest intact (and you drew the Cleveland that really should have been drawn this time from that perspective). I don't think a VRA seat would be possible in 2020 for Cleveland. You'd have to link it to Columbus by that point.

The only unfortunate issues to me are the NE corner seat and the 5th that stretches from Columbus to the Ohio River.

I'd guess that map would be something like:
8 R (2,3,4,5,7,8,12,13)
4 D (6,9,11,14)
3 Tossup (1,10,15)

Bingo.  My map maker has now labeled it OH-07, but I know which one you mean. Columbus is the growth epicenter, and it's moving north and east mostly I think.

I agree here too: Columbus is clearly the metro area expected to grow the most over the next decade. To some extent, the population growth missing from NE Ohio recently is living in Columbus.

The north and east sides have the widest selection of growing suburbs at the moment, so the seat you chose is quite likely to be the fastest growing. Interestingly, Licking County was the one that swung most toward Obama in 2012 despite him losing it by a larger margin than he did in 2008 just from the population growth. By 2020, suburbia might stretch all the way to Newark and Delaware City.

I'd have to imagine though that at some point people will start to realize how much available land there is on the south side close to downtown that is pretty desolate and undeveloped. Columbus is a weird city in that you can exit downtown to the north or east and be in developed areas for close to an hour's drive, but leave southwest and be in a corn field in 10 minutes.

[TJ in Oregon]

Actually Torie, I think your OH-15 will see more blacks moving in than your OH-10. By 2020, I'd suspect Solon will be close to a majority black and Lyndhurst will look like South Euclid in its racial mix. Lyndhurst and South Euclid share a school district, so based on the way white flight works, I think it will be a major factor. On the west side, white flight still hasn't happened from the city itself yet for the most part (though it is now happening in a number of places in part as a consequence for gentrification of the near west side and downtown area). But the west side of Cleveland itself likely won't yet be majority black (or close even) by 2020. In addition, the few places that would seem somewhat likely to have some blacks moving in (maybe Berea since its a college town and somewhat "hip", or Lakewood, Brook Park, or Brooklyn) are in your OH-11. Parma and Parma Heights may see some racial changes, but it will be minimal because they have a history of locally being known as racist suburbs, although it's not quite how it used to be. Otherwise, the western suburbs are close to 0% black. I think Rocky River for instance is 1.0% black. Many of the working class parts of that area are ConservaDems and another decade will likely erode their strength some more.

After considering it some, I'd guess OH-1 would be lean Dem, OH-10 would be lean R, and OH-15 a true toss-up (moving left since it's R+3 at the moment). OH-10 could be made lean D if desired by switching out some suburbs in favor of some white liberal places like Lakewood or Berea, assuming they're still largely white by then, or by putting Lorain and Elyria in it instead of so much of Medina County. OH-1 is a map-drawing problem for the Republicans since the white flight reinforces their exurban strongholds that are safe anyway in expense of Cincinnati. There's not much that can be done about that. Of course, if the GOP figured out how to get 30-40% of the black vote, Cinci would be theirs indefinitely.