Talk Elections

In Ohio it appears increasingly likely that Republicans will once again dominate the redistricting process.  The legislature draws congressional boundaries and unless Democrats pull off a miracle and maintain control of the General Assembly, the GOP will control both chambers.

State legislative districts are drawn by the 5 member apportionment board consisting of the governor, secretary of state, auditor, and two members appointed jointly by the minority and majority leaders of the two houses of the legislature.  Strickland is increasingly looking like he'll be ousted and with open seats for both the auditor and secretary of state the GOP has the advantage.  The bright spot for Ohio voters is that the GOP candidate for SoS has been a champion of fair redistricting reform in the legislature and has promised to continue pursuing that goal if he is elected.

With Ohio poised to lose two seats in the House and many Democrats in danger this year it will be interesting to see if the GOP is able to protect all of their potential newly elected representatives in 2012.

If Republicans pick up more than three seats in Ohio, its going to be pretty much impossible not to see one Republican seat eliminated.  

Not Necessarily.  The GOP can Shut the Dems out of Southern and Central Ohio pretty well (better than the current map actually, as they can expand the 1st and 15th further into the Cincinnati and Columbus Suburbs), and they can limit the Democrats to 5 in Northern Ohio if they draw the lines right.  I wouldn't be surprised to see a 10-6 or 11-5 GOP map in 2012.

To stimulate discussion, here is a fair and ungerrymandered (save for VRA, OH-11 is 52% black) map of Ohio.

The only really controversial thing is the OH-12/OH-14 alignment. I could have put Ashtabula in OH-14 and then tried to work OH-12 around the Portage/Stark area, but this design made more sense to me.

OH-18 disappears entirely, OH-12 and OH-04 merge, and OH-17 is renumbered to OH-12. The rest should be reasonably recognizable.

I mostly ignored county lines in favor of communities of interest. One goal was to avoid splitting larger urban areas, so I did the urban districts first and then drew the rural/exurban ones around them. I think this is the most reasonable way to do maps; splitting cities is a horrible practice that should be avoided when possible.
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That could well open up OH-07 to a Democratic pickup if you take too many suburbs out of that district.  

The other problem the GOP has is OH-14 which will almost certainly be forced to take on a good chunk of Democratic leaning territory.  I'm betting that Latourette and Ryan are probably going to be pitted against each other.

OH-7 moves into the Conservative parts of the Current OH-18, which helps.

Also, I gave OH-14 parts of OH-10 actually, specifically the Southern Cleveland Suburbs that I think are close to even (Given how the Eastern Suburbs vote), and LaTourette is a good enough incumbent to win despite it.

If you take the conservative parts of OH-18 away, you will just make Zach Space much safer or open the district up to a Democratic takeover in a bad year if he loses in 2010.  Most of that district is traditionally Democratic.

What happens to LaTourrette in a bad year in a district more Democratic?  Democrats held that seat(or  one in the same general area) for years before LaTourrette won it

If I assume GOP control, then this was my attempt to maximize their result. I kept counties as intact as possible and kept districts defensibly compact. The VRA district links Akron to Cleveland along the Cuyahoga Valley NP. Based on the nearly even presidential results of 2004 to judge the districts this would be 12-4 in favor of the GOP.

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I have a hard time seeing your 16th not going Democratic.  

I think that's intended to be one of the four (the other three being the 9th, 10th, and 11th.

13 and 2 also could well go Democratic with such large portions of Cincinatti and Cuyahoga.

A Generic R could easily hold 2, given that Eastern Hamilton County is more Conservative than the rest.  The Current one is R + 13, and the one drawn here is not much different.

13 is hard, because Wayne, Medina, Ashland, and Holmes Counties are all strongly Republican and they comprise like 2/3rds of this district's pop.  South Cuyahoga is also much more competitive than Cleveland proper, and it has a moderately Democratic portion of Summit county.  It's far from a Safe R, but shouldn't be too hard of a Republican hold.

Though for the original map, I would suggest moving the 5th district closer in to Toledo, Pushing the 9th Eastward into the 10th, and then moving the 10th into the Cuyahoga portion of the 13th, and then the 13th into the 5th.  That 5th is pretty heavily Conservative, and so some Republican voters can be spared for the 13th indirectly.

Actually both CD 1 and 2 as I drew them would have voted McCain in 2008. CD 1 is closest at 51.5-48.5, and CD 2 would have been 54-46. In an even statewide year like 2004 they both would be about 56 or 57% R.

What's your approximation for CD-6 & CD-7.  They both seem to have the largest chunks of Franklin county.

They are fairly close and probably would have been for Obama by 51-49 or so, but would be R in most years. With precise precinct data I could adjust that by shifting Champaign (and maybe Logan) to 7 and bringing 4 deeper into Columbus. CD 8 could move into Springfield if needed and give up some R areas to CD 6.

Youve drawn a map where Democrats could win OH-01, OH-06, OH-07, OH-09, OH-10, OH-14, OH-13, OH-16, and probably OH-02 if Schmidt is still around in a good Dem year.  Republicans are going to have to concede a seat to Democrats in Columbus to keep the surrounding districts at least 54%-55% Republican.  

CD 9, 10 and 16 are strongly D and with CD 11 make up the 4 certain D seats in this map. As I noted, CD 1 and 2 would have voted for McCain, so it would take an even larger Dem wave than 2008 to topple the seats. I agree that as drawn CD 6 and 7 are vulnerable, but both are close with 2008 data. I'll post an update that can keep them R in that year.

2008 wasnt really a wave and 2006 wasnt that big.  We still havent seen a Dem +50 wave since 1974.  

Hey, Muon2, are you going to drink the kook-aid and now put all those Dems in Columbus in one of more GOP districts, rather than just give up, and give them a CD, or, alternatively do something creative, and combine them with some Dems in Cleveland or Akron, thereby creating some hideous looking gerrymander for the ages map, or what?  :)

What? You didn't appreciate my Sept. offering? ;) Look how neat and compact most of the districts are as well. Of course, with the 5 district pick up this week, a map like this would still cost on GOP member in 2012.

Technically, the last D+50 election was 1948 (although 1958 and 1974 were both D+49).

That thing is a monstrosity :o  Well done ;)

Yep, splitting Dayton and Cinci, plus dividing Columbus and environs up into 4 separate districts to ensure GOP domination in the congressional district is positively evil, Muon. I didn't know you were one of those mad scientist types. ;)

Sadly, I wouldn't put anything this horrid past the Ohio GOP. >:(

That's exactly the map where it's more of a question as to when it'll backfire, not if it will.

What is the McCain margin in CD-12?  If looks weak to me.

BTW I have a tough time believing that map would ever stand a VRA challenge since it is largely based on diluting the black population of Columbus as much as possible.

Without precinct data for Franklin and Delaware Counties, I can't really tell, but McCain got around 56% in the whole counties to the east, which account for over 60% of the district's population. Delaware County is pretty uniformly Republican and voted 59% McCain. And looking at the town map on the Atlas for 2004, it appears that some of the most Republican areas of Franklin County are in the northeast corner, but the district takes in some Democratic areas of Franklin County as well. I would consider 55% McCain to be a solid, conservative estimate.

I don't recall now if it is legal to slice and dice the black vote, if there is not enough of it, which if put together, would make for a majority-minority "community of interest" CD.  I think there are something like 250,000 blacks in Franklin County. Right now, if I recall, there are mostly in Tiberi's CD.  That is why I wondered about the partisan lean of CD-6 on the map above, because Tiberi's district having checked it out, takes in the northeast corner of Franklin.

The largest Columbus-area district that is at least 50% black has only about 340 K people with 170 K black. That is only about half the population of a CD, and under Bartlett, the state has no obligation to maximize the black vote in that district. OH has no community of interest law that applies to CDs either. So, there should be no basis to challenge the split in that map.

I drew CD 6, 7, and 12 to all be about R+1 to R+3 using 2004 voting. Without a precinct map its hard to be more precise. With more precise data CD 4 can be used to improve the R performance of the other 3 Franklin districts. In a wave D year they all would be at risk, but the goal was to maximize GOP chances and hope that the incumbents hold it in a bad year. LaTourette is an example of that type of OH incumbent in 2008.

The incoming class is 13 R - 5 D, and OH will likely lose 2 seats. To even hold 12 R after redistricting in 2012 will require quite a few swing districts with only slight GOP lean.

Leips has town and township returns for 2004 for many states, and that is what I used for my map of Michigan. The trick then, is to find a township map, which sometimes are hard to find. But I got lucky with Michigan (http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Congress01-state-E_43697_7.pdf). Gosh, how I live the internet. I am glad I lived long enough to enjoy it. :)

In any event, with these tools, map drawing is just a blast for me. I just love it, particularly if there are legal constraints. I just love trying to figure out how to circumvent them.  It is just in my nature I guess.

Of course, that won't help you for big cities. For that, absent returns, you just need to know the town. I could map LA just from my head (well, not the bit about precisely where to draw the lines to get the "right" percentages of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, particularly the former two, since what is going on on the ground is changing so rapidly as the the landscape turns "brown" from black). I mean, USC is in an Hispanic neighborhood now.  Who knew?

The current map is already an obscene Republican gerrymander - if they tried to make it any more Republican, they would either run afoul of the VRA or set themselves up for a big reversal if the natinonal environment changed again - which was what happened in 2008.

The GOP challenge in OH is how to deal with the loss of two seats on the current map. Realistically they may have to reduce both one D and one R seat, but the remaining seats can be just as strongly drawn R as they were 10 years ago.

I think its going to be really difficult for the GOP to create a 12R-4D map that would hold for more than one or two elections.  Although the map you've put forth certainly gives the Republicans a huge advantage I think its stretching them a bit too thin in some places.  In a bad GOP year like 2006 or 2008 I could definitely see things ending up as at least 8R-8D or even 7R-9D depending on candidate quality and the number of open seats.  Although it might sting to do it, I think the Republicans would be much better served over the course of 2012-2020 to draw a safe 11-5 map and eliminate two of their incoming freshmen.

I was just looking up where the new freshmen live, and apparently, Bill Johnson, of the 6th District, lives in, of all places, Mahoning County. That's a disaster waiting to happen. If a Republican district is to be chopped, that's the one.

Here's my (hopefully) 12-4 Republican map:

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(Damn zoom levels were uncooperative. Anyway, it should be obvious where the cut off pieces go.)

Cleveland:
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Columbus:
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And Cincinnati:
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District 1 (Blue, Cincinnati)- Incumbent: Steve Chabot (R): The district loses its Butler County portion and gains Republican areas in northeastern Hamilton County. Should still be a fairly safe Republican seat.
District 2 (Green, Cincinnati-Athens)- Incumbent: Jean Schmidt (R): As part of the current Sixth District's removal, everything from Athens County west was added to the Second. The whole counties in this district (with Athens County being counted as whole despite a small portion being in the Seventh) voted 56.67% McCain, and 59.40% Bush in 2004.
District 3 (Purple, Dayton)- Incumbent: Michael Turner (R): Not much changed here- the district picked up more of Warren County and part of Ross County. Should be Safe Republican.
District 4 (Red, Springfield-Lima-Mansfield)- Incumbent: Jim Jordan (R): Democrats in Springfield get sunk into the Fourth rather than the Seventh.  Safe Republican.
District 5 (Yellow, Bowling Green-Ashland)- Incumbent: Bob Latta (R): This district is made slightly more Democratic by pushing further into the Toledo suburbs. Should still be safe Republican.
District 6 (Teal, Youngstown-Akron)- Incumbents: Tim Ryan (D) vs. Bill Johnson (R): Formerly the 17th. For reasons that I explained above, the Sixth District is a likely candidate for elimination. In this plan, Johnson gets paired with Ryan in a district that heavily favors Ryan. Johnson's other option is to move to the new 13th, and run against fellow Republican freshman Bob Gibbs in the primary. Bear in mind that although a Republican holds the Sixth District now, it is essentially a Democratic-leaning seat being eliminated.
District 7 (Grey, Xenia-Lancaster)- Incumbent: Steve Austria (R): This district loses Springfield and gains rural areas in Hocking, Vinton, and Ross Counties. Safe Republican.
District 8 (Lavender, Exurban Cincinnati-Dayton)- Incumbent: John Boehner (R): This district gains territory in Mercer, Butler, and Warren Counties. Safe Republican.
District 9 (Sky Blue, Toledo-Lorain)- Incumbent: Marcy Kaptur (D): This district sheds some of the Toledo suburbs to pick up Democratic Lorain and Elyria, as part of the effort to eliminate the Thirteenth. Safe Democratic.
District 10 (Magenta, Cleveland-Akron) Incumbents: Dennis Kucinich (D) vs. Betty Sutton (D): Kucinich might actually live in the Eleventh, I'm not sure. This district essentially combines the current Tenth and Thirteenth Districts, to eliminate one of Kucinich and Sutton. This district should be safe Democratic.
District 11 (Yellow Green, Cleveland-Euclid) Incumbent: Marcia Fudge (D): This district barely qualifies as black-majority at 50.38% Black. Safe Democratic.
District 12 (Pale Blue, Columbus-Newark) Incumbent: Pat Tiberi (R): I didn't mess around too much with Columbus because I don't know exactly where in Columbus Stivers lives. This district gains eastern Licking County and western Knox County. Should be Safe Republican.
District 13 (Peach, Zanesville-New Philadelphia) Incumbent: Bob Gibbs (R): This district picks up the center of the current Sixth, from Columbiana to Washington Counties, and makes room for it by shedding territory to the southwest. The whole counties in this district voted 51.52% for McCain, and 54.07% for Bush in 2004.
District 14 (Bronze, Mentor-Ashtabula) Incumbent: Steven LaTourette (R): This district unfortunately has to expand, and has no place to go but south. That makes the district more Democratic, but I think this is the best that can be done.
District 15 (Orange, Western Columbus) Incumbent: Steve Stivers (R): As I explained above, I don't know exactly where Stivers lives. If I did, I might have tried something more adventurous. The district doesn't look like it's changed much, and it hasn't, but it picks up Republican suburbs in northwestern Franklin County.
District 16 (Light Green, Canton-Medina) Incumbent: Jim Renacci (R): This district doesn't change too much, picking up mostly Republican parts of Medina and Lorain counties to facilitate the Thirteenth District's elimination. This district is probably slightly more Republican than it is currently.

I have to think that for a 12-4 configuation, it makes more sense to chop up both Kucinich and Sutton, run Renacci up into that side of Cayuhoga county (dropping Stark), and carving a new Dem seat in Columbus.

Could probably run the 4th up to eat Ottowa and Erie Counties, and put Lorain in the existing 9th.

In fact I just tried this.

You can throw the entirity of Marcia Fudge's current 11th, plus the entire Cleveland portion of the current 10th, into the new 11th. 50% black.

That leaves places like Fairview Park, Rocky River, Olmstead, Parma, etc, that are between McCain 40% and 50% areas. You can throw these into Renacci's district and remove Stark county, Renacci should be fine as long as he holds Ashland and Wayne Counties.

Then you just throw Akron into the Youngstown district and Lorain into the Toledo district. Presto, 3 districts in Northern Ohio, the 11th and 13th vanish.

For a map to be real, one must know the Bush 2004 election returns, and do precinct by precinct analysis when one is divvying up counties, particularly the larger ones. Anything less than 54.5% Bush 2004 becomes vulnerable, and I try if possible to get to 55%, before I am satisfied. That would be a GOP PVI for the Bush 2004 numbers of +3% to +3.5%. That is what is needed for GOP incumbents to be reasonably safe if not flawed in a Dem year. And I won't draw a more heavily GOP district to save some weak incumbent who under performs, like say Bachmann, if it is going to make another GOP slated seat too vulnerable. Do you guys have different standards than that?

And this only obtains to areas north of the Mason Dixon line in general, that are not heavily Hispanic. When either of those factors obtain, it is a whole new ball game (for example, when might the Hispanics who are not voting now, start to vote?), and of course for Texas, the Bush numbers are essentially worthless, because they are inflated.

I have some of that voting data, and I am reworking my preelection map to see how well a 12-4 map could be constructed with new incumbents. SW OH is easy to get everyone up to 55% R without a lot of shifts. With a four-way split 53% R looks possible for the Columbus area, and I'm still looking to see if it can get higher.

NE OH does not look hopeful for such strong districts. I'm convinced that no splitting of Akron works for the GOP, and so it will have to be attached to one of the Cuyahoga districts to get it out of any intended R districts. Even so, LaTourette's district may not be better that 51% with '04 numbers. The new members in 6 (Johnson) and 18 (Gibbs) both live near the northern ends of their districts pressing more members into NE OH than before.

Johnson lives just south of Youngstown on the border of the district, and its hard to see how his home avoids being in a Youngstown-Warren district built for Ryan. That would fit with a natural inclination to link the heavily Dem areas in current CD 6 with Ryan's base. I also see that Renacci lives quite close to Sutton, which creates the possibility of putting them both in the same district with a 56% R vote in 2004. The GOP could then claim some fairness by eliminating one district from each party and setting up two general election matchups between incumbents, with Dems favored in one and the GOP favored in the other.

This is part of the reason I think the 6th will definitely be eliminated. It is, after all, a Democratic-leaning district. By eliminating it, the GOP can say that they're getting rid of a Democrat and a Republican, but they're really getting rid of two Democratic districts.

Ohio 12-4

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I used the spreadsheet from the Ohio SoS site for county splitting.



Major changes:


CD-1 (Chabot) - I cut this from 36% black to 21% black, replacing them with Republicans from Claremont County

CD-2 (Schmidt) - Weakened a bit to shore up CD-1. Added Scioto and Lawrence Counties.

CD-3 (Turner)  - Adds a bit of heavy Republican territory to the east. I also used John Boehner to shore him up in Dayton a tad. If Mr. Speaker nixes that idea, well, Turner will have to take Trotwood back, but he's ok.

CD-4 (Jordan) - If he's not running for Senate, he comes back to a slightly weaker, but easily holdable district. The sections of Lorain county in his district actually voted ~54% McCain. The sections of Cuyahoga he has are ~50% McCain.

CD-5 (Latta) - There's a bit of an excess of Republicans here, but you can't do much with them.

CD-6 (Gibbs/Johnson) - This district is probably 50/50. There's really not much to do to make it safe; I think the GOP has to live with this one.

CD-7 (Austria) - About the same. Adds Democratic Athens County and some other Republican counties.

CD-8 (Boehner) - See above. Mostly unchanged.

CD-9 (Kaptur) - Adds heavily Democratic areas of Lorain County.

CD-10 (open) - Packed in Columbus seat. Safe Dem, no incumbent. I didn't really work on the specific borders that much.

CD-11 (Fudge) - Packed in Cleveland seat. Probably one of the most Democratic seats in the country outside of California. 50% black as I have it.

CD-12 (Tiberi) - He also staircases up to Stark County.

CD-13 (Ryan) - The old 17th, plus all of Akron and Cuyahoga Falls.

CD-14 (Latuorette) - Tricky. You can't take him west, so he goes South. The areas I added from Summit county (Tallmage, Richfield) are about 50% McCain. Boehner really needs to keep Latuorette in the House.

CD-15 (Stivers) - He doesn't live here, but the new CD-15 staircases up to Stark County.

CD-16 (Renacci) - Drops Stark County. Adds ~40% McCain areas of Cuyahoga County (Brooklyn, Parma). I did give him some Richland territory to compenate, but this district might have to swap areas with the 4th a bit.


If the GOP wanted to get really ugly, they could work CD-5 into Cuyahoga county by running a tendril through Lorain County.

Overall I can see 16 and 6 being vurnerable, but everything else looks fairly ironclad. Mean Jean might lose the 2nd, but a better Republican will probably win it back.

It should be possible per the back of the envelop analysis to reach a 55% Bush 2004 goal for 12 seats given the lack of legal restrictions that would crimp the Pubbies style. The only issue is how erose the map gets, and whether either due to that, or incumbent Pubbie issues about being discommoded and the like, the map doesn't cut it politically from a Pubbie standpoint.

The 4 most Dem existing CD's had the following Kerry margins: 63+26+17+17= 123. Ohio statewide had a 2.2% Bush 2004 margin. 2.2 x 16 = 35.2. 35.2+123 =  158.2. (158.2/12)/2 = 6.59, or 56.59% Bush 2004 per each of the 12 Pubbie slated CD's.  

The other issue lurking out there, is whether a more up to date and aggressive Dem packing of the 4 CD's can fully offset or not the need of the 4 CD's to take in a lot more folks, thereby having to add presumably more marginal political territory. If not fully offset, the 123 number will drop, thereby causing the 56.59% number to drop a bit.  But you have quite a bit of a pad over 55% I would think with which to work, even if there is some erosion.

One potential problem of course is the northeast corner district, which can only go in certain directions. It will need a careful scalpel of the Cleveland area precincts I would think to get there.

This assumes of course that I did the math right!  :P

Addendum: By the way, for PA we have the following Kerry margins: 75+69+40+13= 197. PA statewide had a -2.5% Bush 2004 margin. -2.5 x 18 = -45. -45+197 = 152. (152/14)/2 = 5.43, or 55.43% Bush 2004 per each of the 14 Pubbie slated CD's.  Now, with the new Pittsburgh CD that I drew, I was able to pick up 2 points, and PA-13  now only has Kerry winning with a 13% margin, and surely that can be pushed up to a 20% margin I would think, and that gets us up to 206, and -45+206 = 161, which when divided by 28 gives us 55.75% Bush. But CD1 and CD2 in PA are probably going to have lower numbers than 75 and 69, which will push the 55.75% number back down. So PA is going to be tight. The issue is whether I can just hit the 54.5% Bush 2004 mark or not for all of the Pubbie CD's in the Philly area. And I don't want to go lower than that, because the trends in the Philly area suck for the GOP. I really would like to get to 55% there.  It is not going to be easy!  

I must say that it is convenient for the Pubbies that CD-01 and CD-02 are so Dem isn't it? Absent that, it would not be possible at all obviously.

One lesson from all of this, is when the numbers are tight, you need to follow the Goldilocks rule rather rigorously. If you draw much more than say a 56% Bush CD in PA, you are digging your own grave vis a vis the leash the Dems to just 4 CD's goal. So if you find that you have drawn say a 57% or more Bush 2004 CD in Ohio, you need to try to get it a bit more Dem, or you may find that later on in your drawing, that you have hit a wall.

Oh, one other thing. For OH-01,  if the black population in Hamilton County is growing in percentage, and/or there is some evidence of latte liberals moving in, you need to be careful to append Pubbie areas that have some dynamic Pubbie growth going on (one trick although maybe not particularly relevant for population static Ohio, is to add precincts that are rather empty in population density, but slated to be where the next subdivisions are going to be built. Willie Brown in CA when he was the master drawer of CD's, once told me that that was one factor he was very careful to factor in). For OH-01 adding such areas will probably will not be that difficult, but one needs to bear the issue  in mind. These districts need to last for 10 years. And ditto for Franklin County (where I know at least the latte liberals have been pouring in, if not necessarily the blacks, but check that out too would be my suggestion).

I activated the map. BTW Gibbs lives in Holmes county so that puts him in CD 15 in your map.

Thank you, muon2.

I did some rough math.

CD-16 is sitting at about 50/50. That's better than his current district but not really safe. Jim Jordan's CD-4 is about 56% McCain, I am not sure whether we can weaken that any more than I have. He's not exactly moderate.

CD-14 is also sitting at about 50/50, but that can't be helped.

CD-6's full counties are sitting about 53% McCain combined. The areas in Portage/Stark drag that down, though. To shore this district up, I think you can throw the town of Alliance into the 12th.

Every other district should be sitting about about 54% McCain or higher.

Don't overlook Sutton in your map. She lives right on the border of 14 and 16 as you've drawn it, and both districts are vulnerable to a Dem challenge. I think she would likely run in 16 since LaTourette is more entrenched in 14. In that case she would stand a good chance of winning in 2012, which I doubt would be the GOP's plan.

That's why I suggest making the district that includes Renacci much stronger than the other GOP districts in NE OH. You've already put Stivers or Gibbs out of a district so something has to be done to prevent the GOP conceding both seats in the reduction to 16 districts.
 

These are the 2010 results for CD-13

Cuyahoga County - 100.00% (1,068 of 1,068) Precincts Reporting
Candidate   Percent Of Votes   Votes
Ganley, Tom (R)   55.25%   20,667
Sutton, Betty (D)   44.75%   16,737

Lorain County - 100.00% (234 of 234) Precincts Reporting
Candidate   Percent Of Votes   Votes
Sutton, Betty (D)   57.83%   40,337
Ganley, Tom (R)   42.17%   29,412

Medina County - 100.00% (151 of 151) Precincts Reporting
Candidate   Percent Of Votes   Votes
Ganley, Tom (R)   53.82%   9,994
Sutton, Betty (D)   46.18%   8,575

Summit County - 100.00% (475 of 475) Precincts Reporting
Candidate   Percent Of Votes   Votes
Sutton, Betty (D)   60.78%   53,157
Ganley, Tom (R)   39.22%   34,294


And these are the 2006 results


DISTRICT NUMBER: 13
COUNTY   Craig Foltin   *Betty Sutton       
    Republican   Democratic       
Cuyahoga **   17,380   18,835       
Lorain **   29,731   41,128       
Medina **   8,063   11,694       
Summit **   30,750   63,986       
Total   85,924   135,643       
Percentage of Votes   38.78%   61.22%   


As you can see, Sutton breaks even in the Cuyahoga part (even in a good year). The difference between a good year and a bad year is for the most part the margin in Akron, which I put in Tim Ryan's district. But my 16th doesn't have any Lorain territory at all, and only a tiny sliver of Summit County territory.

In order for Sutton to win the new 16th, she would have to perform much better in the Southern Cleveland Suburbs that she historically has done, since she is not going to do well at all in Ashland/Richland.


The reason I don't like the configurations that maintain an OH-10 based on Cleveland suburbs is that you end up with a D+6 or so district, maximum. It's just not an efficient pack, and its not a district the GOP can win.

If you wanted to pack the 4 NE districts more, you could drop the west Cuyahoga suburbs in OH-10 and give it more of Akron, and then put some Dem areas of Stark County into Ryan's district (enough to dig out the heart of Canton?).  Doesn't help LaTourette, but it doesn't seem like much can be done about him.  

Addendum:

Something like this:
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Renacci takes the eastern slice of Lorain and northwest corner of Cuyahoga - these are lean Bush territories.  Instead of pushing too far south, or into eastern Cuyahoga, LaTourette takes over the southern part of Cuyahoga - these suburbs lean R as well.  Then much of Canton can be taken over in the Dem pack.  

The first thing I do now, is check where each Congressman lives. It turns out that Potts in PA-16 lives clear over in Eastern Chester County, even though most of his CD is in Lancaster County. What a bummer!  My PA CD map is going to look like a real mess - basically just a row of snakes in the central to eastern part of the state it looks like.

wrong thread cowboy...  :)

Well, in my defense, the first sentence was generically germane, and the balance giving an example of having to deal with residency issues vis a vis another state, an issue that just might crop up in Ohio. Beyond where Potts lives in PA-16, Tom Marino lives right on the edge of his district in PA-10 for example. That can potentially really constrict one's drawing style. You sir, I suspect, would be a hanging judge. :P

Here's another stab at a 12-4 map:

State

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NE Ohio

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Columbus

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OH-01 (blue, Steve Chabot - R) - Shaved off a bit of Cincinnati proper and added some of the suburbs SE of the city.
OH-02 (green, Jean Schmidt - R) - Stretches the length of the state now. Still should remain a pretty Republican district, and as long as Schmidt can keep her trap shut, she shouldn't have any trouble winning here.
OH-03 (purple, Mike Turner - R) - Includes almost all of Dayton now, but that's compensated for by having the district stretch north to the heavily-Republican rural counties.
OH-04 (red, Jim Jordan - R) - Cuts out part of Columbus to help Stivers. The rest of the district is pretty Republican, so it shouldn't endanger Jordan.
OH-05 (yellow, Bob Latta - R) - Wow, Ohio's Congressional delegation is generic. This district is mostly the same.
OH-06 (teal, Bill Johnson - R and Bob Gibbs - R) - Battle of the underwhelming freshmen! OH-06 and OH-18 are combined to make a Republican-leaning district.
OH-07 (grey, Steve Austria - R) - Seriously, have any of these white dudes done anything? This one cuts out part of Columbus, but again should be compensated for with some Republican parts in the southwest.
OH-08 (light purple, John Boehner - R) - Nobody's going to mess with the Speaker's seat, obviously. Takes in the (Republican) Dayton suburbs now.
OH-09 (sky blue, Marcy Katpur - D) - Hooray, a Democrat to talk about. This is the inevitable Toledo-to-Lorain district that everyone has been drawing for Kaptur.
OH-10 (magenta, Dennis Kucinich - D) - All the white, Democratic parts of Cuyahoga County, and a bit of Lake County. Safe for Kucinich.
OH-11 (light green, Marcia Fudge - D and Betty Sutton - D) - The black parts of Cleveland connected to Akron in order to maintain a majority-black district (52% black). Sutton's hometown of Copley has been split between this district and OH-16, and there's no chance of her winning a primary here or a general there.
OH-12 (very light purple, Pat Tiberi - R) - I kept Tiberi's portions of Columbus together because all the African-Americans are in OH-12, and splitting them up might cause a court fight. Expanded the outlying parts some to move the needle a couple points to the Republicans.
OH-13 (pink, Tim Ryan - D) - The former OH-17, it snakes from the Youngstown area down to Canton and Dover. I believe this puts ex-Reps. Boccieri and Space in the district just to spice things up a bit.
OH-14 (brown, Steve LaTourette - R) - Stretches down to the Akron/Canton suburbs; should remain Republican-leaning.
OH-15 (orange, Steve Stivers - R) - Cuts out a bunch of Columbus and stretches southeast in order to make this a much less swingy district. Wasn't sure where in Columbus Stivers lived, but he can always move.
OH-16 (light green, Jim Renacci - R) - Dumps Canton and expands north to the Cleveland and Akron suburbs, so it should be pretty safe Republican now.

Steve Austria is not a white dude.

Thanks, the ethnicity of a Republican backbencher is the one thing I wanted people to focus on.

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I revised my northeast map, scouring the Dem districts for any and all Republican areas.  LaTourette's district was the priority, for two reasons - 1) his is the hardest district to help, and 2) he has the seniority to demand it.  The easiest way to add GOP votes to his district is not to head south - the rural townships of Stark County are strong Republican, but to get there you have to go through parts of Summit that are 50/50 at best, more lean D (I'm using 2004 numbers), and these are more densely populated.  (On the east and south of Akron only Stow is lean GOP, and that's already in OH-14.)  If you go through Portage County then you need the Cleveland-Akron Dem district to take in Kent and Ravenna, which means it can't take all of the parts of Cuyahoga and Summit that you'd like it to.  

So to shore up LaTourette, you take in the southernmost Cuyahoga suburbs and rural northwest Summit County, all of which are reasonably R territory.  

Taking those into OH-14, and Norton into OH-16, allows OH-10 to take in more of East Akron, freeing up Ryan's district to take in pretty much all of Canton and Massillon from Renacci.  Renacci's district is then almost TOO strongly R - there wouldn't have been a single Dem-leaning area in it, I don't think - so I extended a finger down to grab the Dem-leaning cities (not to mention Zack Space's home) from Tuscarawas County; I don't know if that's necessary but what the heck.  

If this is not the optimal way to do the Dem pack, it's darned close - every R-leaning township other than the connecting strips has been taken out.  The only other thing you might try is pushing some of the Dem districts into Lake County, but then you have to worry about OH-11 dropping below 50% black (it's barely over 50% in my map).  

Addendum: I should mention that the parts in the north are unchanged from the previous map, that's why I cut it off.  

I think a 13-3 is possible if you split Toledo and give half to Jordan and the other half to Latta, meaning Kaptur and Sutton go.  Kucinich, Fudge and Ryan are left.

If you're going to fracture Columbus, is there a way to route Bob Latta into there as well?

Not without a really tortured-looking map. I think once you start splitting counties more than four ways you get into overkill.

With the new ACS estimates, my OH-11 is under by 50,000 voters. I don't think there's going to be any way to keep Fudge's district majority-black.

The new population estimates that just came out help my OH-16 a lot. It drops around 50k voters to the severely underpopulated OH-11 and picks them up in Richfield County.

I really firmly believe that the Democrats can be condensed into 3 Northern Ohio districts.

Really just minor tweaks from the previous map I posted.

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No offense, but I think that red district in northern Ohio is quite unlikely in comparison with some of the other splits. What happens to the partisan balance of the map if Cleveland isn't linked with west-central Ohio?

Technically its not Cleveland; its a combination of the west/south suburbs of Cleveland that vote betweeen 45-53% McCain, and about 500k people.

You can put it all in 1 district along with Huron and Seneca county and get something that's a tossup and a new district.

You can put it all in 1 district along with Medina county and get something that's a tossup for Renacci.

Or you can split it in 2 and do what I did, and get 2 relatively safe Republican districts. I suppose you could give the red half the yellow district instead, but the yellow district isn't that strong since it has Wood and a piece of Lucas County.


Something like this might perhaps be more politically viable as it puts Cuyahoga in a Northern Ohio district rather than a Central Ohio one, and still does something useful with the excess Republicans in the 4th.

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Sure there is.

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I think it's much more likely that the GOP will keep 4 Dem districts in N/NE Ohio and keep the Columbus split.  I doubt that it's any less of a Dem pack if you do it that way (but feel free to crunch the numbers if you think I'm wrong).  Drawing districts that stretch from Cuyahoga to west of Columbus is pretty egregious, and would cause a lot of disruption to incumbents.  All that would be avoided if you just maintained the Columbus split, which the GOP knows it can win.  

I'm 100% sure the math works in my favor.

Basically, we already know that we can put the entire city of Akron in Tim Ryan's district. So, by splitting Akron and running Tim Ryan into Stark county, all you're gaining there is the loss of is Canton, Alliance, and some areas in between.

So basically, if you look at south/west Cuyahoga, Canton, and Alliance:

Alliance is about 75% Dem and 11k ballots cast.
Canton City is about 72% Dem and 46k ballots cast.
The entire section of Cuyahoga you put in the pink district is 56% Dem and 180k ballots.


That's a 60% obama district.


Now, Franklin County is about 1150k people. We can pack the most liberal 718
k people into a compact district here. That's 63% of the whole county. I basically took the county results, sorted them by highest Obama percentage, and plucked out 2/3 of the total.


The math on that ends up at a 71% Obama district. More importantly, this area grew by 35% in the last decade.

So, with the new numbers, the Dems have the Youngstown-Akron CD, the inner city Cleveland CD, the Toledo etc CD, and a Columbus CD, is that correct?  I think it wise to cede a Columbus CD to the Dems - always have. That place is a ticking time bomb for the GOP (government workers and university denizens plus blacks is one demographic the GOP needs to just avoid having in their CD's), and demographically active. It could sink a couple of Pubbies, if they are given the wrong slice of it over time.

Yep. I don't have your matrix skills, but just roughly:

CD-1: R+6
CD-2: R+9
CD-3: R+6
CD-4: R+10
CD-5: R+8
CD-6: R+4
CD-7: R+7
CD-8: R+14
CD-14: R+3
CD-16: R+4


I can't really easily calculate the 2 former Columbus districts (12 and 15). They used to be D+1; I'm just going to assert that they're on the R side now and call it a day.

I wonder if a Dem Columbus CD, after corralling the most Dem precincts, might slip out of Franklin County, and capture some heavily Dem precincts elsewhere, the way I did for IN-07, which broke out of Indianapolis via a river and corridor of green space (so not very many Pubbies were wasted), to get down south to visit the University of Indiana.

There is. Dayton. 100k blacks in 90+% precincts there. It ends up helping Mike Turner I guess, though he has not needed it.

I was thinking of the Columbus CD heading towards the Cleveland area, where there are more Dems than Pubbies, to ease the pressure on whatever GOP CD you guys are plotting to carve out there - in essence basically "stealing" a seat from the Dems. Southwest Ohio has plenty of Pubbies to contain the Dems down there.

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Unconstitutional racial gerrymander or no? (52% black)

Not really. Licking and Knox county don't have any Democrats. You'd have to run all the way up to Tuscawaras or Stark County, and you'd cut through so many Pubbies on the way to get at 45k Dems in Canton.

I can't see how that isn't. And it looks like you combine Chabot and Boehner, too.

Chabot could just move to the western end of the city. He'd get a safe district in return.

I mean, it does have the advantage of making pretty much every other seat outside of the Cleveland/Youngstown/Toledo districts safe for the Republicans.

What are the specifics of VRA Section 2 case law, exactly? Could Ohio, were they to draw that district, just claim it's a perfectly legal partisan gerrymander? Would it be legal if it was plurality white instead?

You could swear up and down that you only looked at voting data and not racial data when drawing that district, yeah. North Carolina did that about a decade ago with the 12th. The question is whether that claim is believable.

It is of course pointless. The only guy who needs help there is Chabot, and there are 3 Republican seats right next door that can skim 40k or so voters each.

Turner doesn't need the help either. There are precincts where McCain got 2 votes and Turner got 80.

Turner might not be around forever. What is the McCain % in your Turner CD, if I may ask?

Turner's is roughly 54% McCain. I might have strengthened him too much by giving him all of Warren County; perhaps I'll give some of it back to Schmidt.

Schmidt has 60% McCain in the full counties and 250k voters in Hamilton that I'll have to crunch by hand.

I would not have the Schmidt CD more than maybe 2%  more McCain than the Turner CD myself. It is a mistake IMO to prop up a weak incumbent too much (or shave too close a CD because it has a strong incumbent like Turner), because the personalities can change, and sometimes it is good to flush an embarrassment in any event, particularly if it is probable a presentable GOP challenger can take the seat back. Schmidt in any event is less of an under performer than she was. She won 59-34 in 2010, which probably runs ahead of the McCain percentages. In 2008 she won 45-37. 

I generally agree with the idea here.

Anyway,  Schmidt comes out at about a 54% McCain district, and Chabot at a 51% district. Chabot can be beefed up some more by bringing Boehner south, but I assume that option is off the table. The only other guy with a 51% district on my map is Bill Johnson who's stuck with about half of Mahoning county (although the good half).

Latuorette has a 50% McCain district.

In any case, Hamilton county was a 52% Bush county that swung into a 53% Obama county and then into a 59% Portman county. It remains to be seen what its long term trends are.

Well Portman has deep roots in Hamilton county. And his numbers in the 2nd district were just pure murder back in the day, really. And make even Schmidt's 59% look like chicken feed.

That's what makes me wonder why the districts were drawn that way. Surely someone must have realized that giving Chabot all those blacks was a bad idea.

If you connect CD 11 to Akron through Twinsburg a 54% black district is possible. CD 16 then connects Youngstown/Warren to Canton/Massillon and Kent. CD 14 remains pretty much as is.

I made this plan with three guidelines;

1. If possible, maintain county lines
2. Population deviation between -75 and +75
3. Try where possible to maintain current 'flavour' of existing districts.

Number two was the most important, and all districts except District 2 meet this criteria.

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District 11 is just a simple majority African-American.

Obviously this plan is far from perfect, but it's my starting point, and I'll aim to refine from here. I really dislike Mansfield, and I'm not sure about the Springfield - Columbus district.

Album link in case pics don't load: http://img211.imageshack.us/g/ohiototal.jpg/

This is not a critique since your goal doesn't seem to be party/incumbent favoritism but I don't think Tiberi would like your 12th district very much.  Taking in that much of Franklin County might actually knock him in out in 2012.  The 15th looks like it would probably remain very competitive but I'm not sure I like the Columbus-Springfield connection.  Also, your new 5th is probably a lot more Democratic leaning than the current and could probably be considered competitive in a 2006/2008 type of year.  All the Democrats look safe or comfortable enough to get re-elected.

I think the 12th is certainly vulnerable to attack, and I agree with you on the Springfield-Columbus link.

I think it's basically a map that favours the Republicans because it reflects the past map, but is far more open to challenge from the right Democratic candidates. It's the kind of map the GOP could propose if they wanted to claim neutrality but only lose 1-2 seats.

Hit the nail on the head.

Cleveland must have gotten REALLY hosed in the census.

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/03/going_far_afield_to_make_a_min.html


Census figures for Ohio, which will be released this week, are expected to show that Rep. Marcia Fudge's present district -- which includes all of Cleveland's East Side, some of the West Side and many of Cuyahoga County's eastern suburbs -- will have to expand by 125,000 to 190,000 residents.

Losing two districts requires a 12.5% increase just to adjust for the loss of the seats.  So that is around 80,000.  I think it will be possible to include all of Cleveland in the majority black district.  It should make for an interesting primary.

I think so too. Cleveland, Akron, and Lorain can all go in CD-11, CD-17, and CD-9, respectively. That's my basis for the double crunch of both Kucinich and Sutton in my maps.

Barbells unfortunately screws that up.

With the neutron bomb that dropped on Cleveland causing so many folks to vanish (mostly Dems), how many seats are the Dems down to in Ohio now, if the GOP does an intelligent gerrymander? I still don't like the idea of not giving the Dems a Columbus seat, but if someone has some hard data that it remains prudent to still chop up Columbus among a bunch of Pubbie seats, taking into consideration that the number of Democrats in the Columbus area will continue to grow robustly, I would like to see it.

I think it's more that Ohio Republicans (especially in Central Ohio) don't want to screw Stivers than anything else.  From a gerrymandering standpoint, you're right, but there are other interests that will also need to be taken into account (which is also why I think the Republicans are going screw Johnson, instead of trying to knock out two Democrats in the Northeast).

As a resident of Columbus, I think it needs its own seat. Especially with all the population growth that we've had in comparison with the rest of the state. The city itself isn't failing like Cincinnati or especially Cleveland. We have a booming African immigrant population that's keeping our numbers up. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville all have seats that are centered around that downtown area. Columbus should too. I think it would actually benefit the Republicans to cut off Stivers as it takes two marginal districts that could both flip with the right candidates probably even after redistricting and just make one very safe district. Along with the slivering up they're going to do to Cuyahoga and the surrounding area, it just makes sense.

Mayor Coleman would be a solid candidate for a Columbus seat...

I still believe the 4 district plan still holds: Kaptur, Fudge, Ryan, and some new dude in Columbus.

It's not at all hard to put Johnson in a McCain seat. While this area I think is more Democratic on the local level than the Presidential level, Johnson still might be able to hold it if he can hold down margins in the Mahoning Valley.

The problem is that there is no way Johnson survives once there is a wave or at least pretty good Democratic year. Now you can probably give him the best district possible and hope he survives as long as he can and maybe even build up a bit of a personal vote if that wave comes, but it'd be a waste to try to make rock solid. Kind of the attitude the PA Republicans have taken to Barletta.

I think the Republicans can do a 13-3 map. Columbus can be easily handled by splitting it in four with Jim Jordan also coming in. His district is currently R+15, so there is no reason other than a court order why the Republicans would add a Democratic seat in Columbus. There is no way to make both Stivers and Tiberi completely safe, but they should both have a better than 50/50 chance of winning re-election if the seats are drawn properly. Maybe a lawsuit will prevent them from cutting Columbus into 4, though nothing has stopped them from cutting into 3, so they may as well try.

The tricky part is the west side of Cleveland because to get a 13-3 map the only remotely feasible thing to do is cut up the 10th and 13th and run Renacci up into the west side of Cleveland. All of the very Democratic parts of the 10th would need to be added to the 11th, which will need alot more people anyways. Akron should be added to the Youngstown district and Lorain and Elyria should be added to the Toledo district. By selecting the right parts of Cuyahoga County you can get down to 54% in that part of the new Renacci district alone and down to 52% (PVR R+1) by adding Medina county and the right parts of Lorain County. This is essentially a toss-up between Renacci and Kucinich, but it wouldn't really help any other districts very much not to try this.

You can't append parts of OH-10 to OH-11, since the former is overwhelmingly white and the latter needs to be majority-black, or at least as close to it as possible.

The only way to keep OH 11 majority black is to attach inner-city Akron to it via I-77 or the Cuyahoga River. No matter what you do, you will have to append some white areas to it because the 11th is so badly underpopulated. Once the census comes out, draw the 11th into Akron to get 50% + 1 VAP black and still absorb as much of the West side as possible. You should be able to get all of Cleveland except the 18th and 19th wards, which are only about 55% Obama. The Akron connection would be erose, but you have to do that to get to 50% + 1 anyways. There aren't enough black people just in Cuyahoga County for an entire district. The 10th is overwhelmingly white, but so are the surrounding parts of the 13th and 14th. The 11th needs so many people that it's hard to imagine it not picking up more of the west side.

The numbers came out today.  Cuyahoga has 380,198 African-Americans before taking into account Hispanic status.  Summit has another 78,120.

Every CD should have around 721,000 residents, meaning 360,500+ is needed for a majority.  If you could capture all of Cuyahoga's blacks, you'd be at 52.7% - before taking into account VAP.  I'd have to download the whole census file to get the county's VAP, but the African-American VAP percentage is almost certainly lower than that - possibly even less than a majority.

So, yes, appending Summit will likely be necessary to create an effective African-American district in Northeast Ohio.  I doubt you'd be able to capture every Cuyahoga County African-American even if you tried - and the county is entitled to about 1.8 of Ohio's 16 CDs.

Of course you can't capture every black in a CD that does not take in the whole county!  I doubt every precinct in Cuyahoga County not in the black CD has zero blacks in it. :)

This is what a Dem pack in Cuyahoga looks like:

() (http://img717.imageshack.us/i/cd11pack.png/)


Racial stats based on the old 2000 data are 49.1% black, 42.2% white, 5.1% hispanic. At a guess, such a district would be sub 50% white even with the new data.


The purple is the Republican (45+% McCain) areas of Cuyahoga, totalling about 273k people.

The pink is the shattered remains of Kucinich's 10th after Fudge takes his best precincts. These areas area about 40% McCain and total about 234k people.

Not really--The part of Cleveland in the district is not all that white (72%, though there are more Hispanics than Blacks), and it contains basically all the blacks in Cuyahoga county that aren't already in the 11th.  Its the least-white place nearby.

Krazen are your population numbers reflective of the population collapse. This isn't the final census data is it?  In any event, I wonder if it is feasible to dump much of the pink area into the Toledo CD.

No, the population numbers aren't. The voting results, however, are, and I think the population numbers are pretty close. The final census results showed that the old CD-11 was 180k under, and on the app, it was 160k under, so I would estimate a 20k error in any direction.

Rocky River, for instance, is a ~45% McCain area. Westlake if I recall was something similar. The purple territory as a whole averages about 48% McCain and is safe for Republicans.

The problem with dumping them in the Toledo CD is that you have to cut through Avon Lake and Bay Village, and those are both >50% McCain areas. Keep in mind that the Toledo CD does not currently have Lorain and Elyria City in it (both heavily Dem areas), so I don't think it will have room for excess population.

The bottom line is that any Republican plan condensing the Democrats down to 3 districts up north has to do something with the ~200k voters in the pink areas.

Did anyone see how much Toledo could be shaved down, picking off the somewhat marginal precincts and putting them into the adjacent Pubbie CD, so that the Toledo snake can push farther east? As to going through the McCain areas, if you just include the precincts appending the lake, I doubt it will suck it much population. In fact, isn't the CD to the south so GOP, that it could even take some pretty Dem precincts, and still be reasonably safe Pubbie? If you are going to cut the Dems down to 3 CD's, each and every one of them needs to be very carefully packed, precinct by precinct, the way I did with the 3 Dem CD's in the Philly area, and even after doing that, it was a pretty close call. I just barely got across the finish line, i.e., to the point where I thought the Philly area Pubbie CD's, PA 06, 07 and 08, could be characterized as it least solidly leaning GOP.

Everything west of I-495, basically. Cuts out ~80k people from the Toledo district.


I thought a lake sneaking chain would be a bridge too far, so I didn't do it. Knock yourself out, though.

() (http://img225.imageshack.us/i/toledocloseup.png/)

Here is my attempted "knockout." About 82,000 folks (per the updated but not final population estimates) in what appears to be the most Dem part of krazen's pink zone are shoved in OH-09 (but marked in pink here, so one can see the population numbers). Other than my pink salient, I followed Krazen's lines exactly. Whether this will work as part of the larger Pubbie jihad to eviscerate Ohio Dem CD's, is a question the answer to which I don't have a clue! :)

If the final census figures show a further population drop for OH-09, then more of the most Dem precincts in Parma can be picked up. I suspect southern and eastern Parma are not that Dem. The precinct stats for Parma are below the maps, with the percentages being the Obama percentage of the two party vote. Unfortunately, the Cuyhoga precinct maps don't match very well the Dave Bradlee ones (they must have changed, both in shape and number), so it is guesswork, which sucks.

An alternative, in lieu of picking up Parma Heights (58.7% Dem), and the most Dem part of Parma, would be to move into Cleveland to the north of Brook Park. There are only about 12 precincts in Cleveland that are below 60% Obama, so that in fact is probably a superior strategy come to think of it.

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Pretty ugly, Torie, but effective.

If you can shove that much of that area into the Toledo district, the rest can just go into Renacci's, and you probably don't even need to crack the area with Jordan's district at all.

I had the same problem; no idea which precincts within Parma are which. So for all those Cayuhoga towns, I just took the average of the entire town.

That Southern band of Cayuhoga (Strongsville, North Royalton) is pretty solid R territory, so good guess.

This appears to be close to the maximally efficient OH-09 prong into Cuyahoga County (depicted in pink). The precinct map labels for the City of Cleveland do match the precinct returns, so I know that the western prong of Cleveland is for Pubbies, what Mordor is for Hobbits. It's Pubbie hell, and needs to be excised to the max extent possible. This is the way to do it. The Lakewood precincts alas do not match, but I did an aerial zoom, and the two precincts that I put into OH-13 look dramatically more prosperous than the balance, so I bit them off.

What remains a problem, is that southern box of the city of Cleveland north of Parma which is drawn into OH-13. Sure it's almost totally white, but as I say, only 12 precincts in Cleveland are under 60% Obama, and I suspect most of them are on the lake on the far east side, where Voinovich lives. We shall see if the population numbers allow for OH-14 to scoop them up, or most of them. If not, probably a bit more of Lakewood needs to be bit off, or the eastern edges of OH-14 further explored, or OH-09 dropping Brooklyn, and/or moving into the southern Cleveland box in lieu thereof. OH-09 is 4,700 over population, but I suspect the final census numbers will get rid of that, and then a bit. OH-11 is over by about 33,000, the way krazen drew the OH-11 map, with my changes on its west side, so the final census numbers will be most interesting.
 
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You could probably re-examine CD-09 over on the Toledo side if you wanted a bigger prong. I left the entire town of Maumee in CD-9; you might be able to chop some population there and in Northwest Toledo to get a bigger prong.

The eastern edge of CD-14 is kind of fixed, though. Pepper Pike is 42% McCain; Lyndhurst is 43% McCain; the rest are <40% areas, and many sub 10%.

Yes, indeed, but 42% and 43% McCain, is going to be a lot better than that southern City of Cleveland box north of Parma, or most of it. That box needs to be bounced from OH-13, or most of it.  But we also need to be sure to follow the VRA, and keep OH-11 majority VAP black, if it seems required by the VRA, and it may well be. Isn't this fun?  :P

You are absolutely right, to look around Toledo for precincts to pinch. Pinching precincts is job one. I just pinched Indianapolis to death in my Indiana gerry. :) I do notice that Berea has about 5 or 6 pinchable precincts, which will be pinched if I can find them.

84   BEREA      5   D   212   314   526   59.70%
83   BEREA      5   C   183   258   441   58.50%
74   BEREA      3   B   215   289   504   57.34%
75   BEREA      3   C   205   265   470   56.38%
68   BEREA      2   A   240   305   545   55.96%
73   BEREA      3   A   255   319   574   55.57%
76   BEREA      3   D   221   255   476   53.57%

Here is what I think is within a percentage point (or close to it), of the max Dem pack for OH-09. The precinct returns map for Cuyahoga County at the bottom should help illustrate the lay of the land. It turns out that all of my surmises were correct! Fancy that. :)

One probably could pick up another 50 basis points by shaving the link counties a bit more (I stole four [nine] precincts), but I felt guilty doing it. Lucas County (Toledo) has been picked pretty dry now.

I grabbed 5 precincts in Toledo Ward 22 (that far eastern precinct in the green CD (OH-05), nearest the Michigan border was actually carried by McCain :)), and also cut out the 4 precincts in the City of Ottawa, which McCain actually carried (barely). Per Krazen's suggestion, I cut out from OH-09 the City of Maumee in Lucas County. The City of Maumee went about 57% for Obama (now added to OH-05), and has 3 or so 60% plus Obama precincts in it, but the Bradlee census tracts in Maumee don't remotely match the 2008 precincts, so it was not feasible to cull them out, and leave them in OH-09. That aside, the number of 60% plus Obama precincts not gobbled up by OH-09 within this part of the state, is probably down to about 15 or so now. (I do notice however from the Cuyahoga County returns map that there are three 60% plus Obama precincts in the northwest corner of Parma Heights that need to be added to OH-09, so that adjustment should be made, and now has been (I had to cut out five more link county precincts to do that, but that cut actually makes the map a bit prettier this time).)

The final census numbers probably will allow picking up another few 55%-60% Obama precincts in Cuyahoga County, in that zone north of Parma in Cleveland. But I think I cut out of OH-13 almost all of the plus 60% Obama precincts now in that area. I also pinched three or four precincts from OH-09 in Berea (those census tracts don't match the real precincts either, but they are close enough for government work).

I think this Dem pack of OH-09 is now sufficient, to probably make the  twin termination of Sutton and Dennis the Menace reasonably  feasible for the Pubbies, if the Pubbies are willing to draw this OH-09 monstrosity. Do they have the balls to do it? Time will tell.

Perhaps someone might wish to use my version of OH-09, and with it, see how the complete Ohio map plays out. We could make this a team effort. :) I would be happy to email my data file for Ohio to whomever wants it. Cheers.

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Your next challenge Torie: Drawn the Akron/Youngstown/Warren district.

Good news though. The actual census value for Cleveland's population is 397,000. The app is drawing it at 438,000 based on the estimates that apply to counties as a whole, so the Fudge district actually has some room to grow.

My 33k over district might not actually be big enough :).


Here's the data if you really want to crunch those municipalities. The app seems to be overstimating the populations of Lorain and Elyria City as well by 12k combined. Euclid and Lakewood seem very close to accurate, and Parma is estimated under.


The Akron precincts in the app total 220k, compared to 200k in the census, but those precincts don't perfectly line up with the city borders.

Ohio cities as a whole completely got destroyed.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/profile/oh

It is a really wonderful thing that OH-11 needs further growth Why beyond the obvious? Because my OH-11 below, while already beautiful, will just get more so. Why?  Because it now both 1) maximizes the Dem pack, and 2) hits 50% black VAP (the latter by the skin of its teeth). Further growth will be to of course pick up more black Akron precincts, pushing its black VAP up to close to 52%, or even hitting it perhaps. Or, as more almost totally black precincts in Akron are picked up, in tandem some Dem precincts at OH-11's eastern edges in Cuyahoga County can be picked up, keeping its black VAP close to the 50% mark - yes over - but not by much. It depends in part I guess on what the partisan numbers for the LaTourette CD look like. It may need some more help.

The balance of NE Ohio should now draw itself. Well, not really, actually. The NE corner CD, LaTourette's (labeled OH-13 on my map), will need to snake around the southern end of the black OH-11 wall, before turning back north all the way to Lake Erie again (well almost certainly not all of the way, but even part of the way, will not look very aesthetic). It is indeed, one butt ugly CD!  :P  Unless of course, by some miracle there are enough folks in the NE corner of Ohio north of Warren, and east of the OH-11 black wall, for it to fit in there. Or maybe with more people, the black wall can be shoved a bit farther west, since it would not need the absolutely most efficient way to get down to black Akron.

The Youngstown CD then takes in whatever remaining precincts there are within reach that are the most Dem.

Make sense?

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I really, really hope that they don't end up putting anything in Akron in the Cleveland District. It makes everything so ugly.

The first concept of CD-13: This is drawing at 40k over, but I am confident that the new census results will put this district at population.


() (http://img822.imageshack.us/i/cantonpack.png/)

One other thought occurs to my lawyer mind in pondering all of this, that touches on your point Krazen, and is yet another reason why OH-11 needing 40,000 more people or whatever is probably the best evidence there is yet that God is a Pubbie. Remember that Mordor zone in west Cleveland that I said had to go from a Pubbie CD? That area has a fairly substantial minority of blacks. To the extent OH-11 can hit 50% black VAP by absorbing Mordor, then the VRA is going to require that, and you can see how that would complicate our little scheme here. Suddenly on OH-11's now retreating east side, there is all of this annoying territory some other CD has to pick up. That is not a good thing.

But if OH-11 needs 40,000 more folks, then picking up Mordor is just not going to work. It may not work anyway, but it is very, very close call - too close for comfort. Now it won't be so close, which means that OH-11 has to go down to Akron to be 50% black VAP, and that means that we can keep/restore/achieve more efficaciously partisan order on OH-11's eastern flank. We don't have to worry that a court will cancel the OH-11 trip to Akron, and issue it a ticket to Mordor instead. Putting to bed that worry can only make the Pubbie gerrymandering jihadists smile from ear to ear.

Sure it will be ugly, but then this map will make ugly into an art form, competing with if not surpassing my PA masterpiece. :P And the Pubbies are just not going to litigate whether the VRA requires an OH-11 visit to Akron; they will just do it. You can write that down. Pubbies don't like to litigate whether or not they are screwing blacks. They are there to help, not hurt, which it comes to the VRA. :)

It does look Krazen if I follow your map (don't you like to make beautiful colors they way I do? That is half the fun!), that there is room to fit LaTourette into his NE corner without a snake around OH-11's Akron extension doesn't it (with perhaps only minor modifications to my black wall perhaps, or maybe there is something north of Warren that can be picked up)?   If so, I wonder what its partisan numbers are. The CD worries me a bit, which is why I probably will use some of OH-11's population growth, to eat away at some of its Dem precincts on LaTourette's western flank. But then that squeezes him some more, but he may need some more elbow on the other side of the wall to Pubbie him up if his current line with OH-11 does not meet partisan gerrymandering goals, and around and around we go.

I guess I'm missing something:

If you do the CD-11 wall, who picks up the rest of Akron? It looks to me like you're wrapping Latuorette around the wall, but that means he's cutting through the nonblack areas of Akron. Based on my map, the wall cuts off 40k population in Richfield, Bath, and Ghent (ie good territory which Larorette wants)

If you're not wrapping Latuorette around the wall, he's going south deep into the Mahoning Valley all the way to Warren itself. That's the main reason I've been hesitant to draw the wall; it seems  to screw CD-14 up.


I thought about what you said; and I just moved the prong.

() (http://img62.imageshack.us/i/prong.png/)

Pretty clean. Mordor and northern Parma to into the Cleveland district. The light blue toledo district cuts through 40k pubbies in Avon Lake/Bay Village to snag the deep blue Lakewood. If the GOP is willing to drawn some 1 mile thick strip along Avon Lake/Bay Village and not actually take any population, some more of Parma can go into the blue district.


My CD-11 is pretty close to population; on the app its 50k over, which I think will end up totalling to be accurate. Any population picked up in Akron in that CD-11 has to be dropped somewhere, and I don't see anywhere good to drop it. I really don't like the idea of the wall because I don't see it helping.


Zoomed out a bit more, I can't wait to try this on the updated DRA whenever he gets around to doing it.:

() (http://img844.imageshack.us/i/ohiofull.png/)

Yes, but OH-11 won't be 50% black VAP, and it has to be. The Pubbies would be fools not to. The LaTourette CD just wraps around the southern edges of the OH-11 prong to Akron, and then gets out of the way on the other side. The Youngstown CD will still get its slug of the Akron action.

I didn't think of a CD from the west coming to grab the Pubbie zone in Cuyahoga. But then, I am just not that familiar with the Ohio map in the northwest and Columbus area - yet.

Your OH-09 Dem pack is less efficient. You lost maybe as much as 3 points, certainly two. Those lost points will have to be picked up by a Pubbie CD. That's pretty expansive, when we are already stretching things here.

Regarding the Columbus split (which yes will probably happen even if it may lie on the hog side of pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered side of the greed line, because a Pubbie butt is at stake), to minimize the odds that the Columbus Dem demographic bomb goes off, we will need to know what the areas of black, Hispanic and government and educational business expansion will be, and to where the socons, particularly those who know where their next pay check is coming from, and don't have to sweat too much about making ends meet for basic needs, are fleeing to get away from a town they used to like but now it just has too much a libertine socialistic moral relativism about it, along with an "excessive" amount of the spectrum of the rainbow in it. The Dem expansion areas need to be chopped up, as part of the process of chopping up the areas that are currently Dem, and the Pubbie expansion areas used for offset against the Dem expansion areas in the right mix. Absent that, this Columbus split thing is a disaster waiting to happen.

So the trick is to find how the same precincts have trended over the last decade, where the demographic changes have been, and what just what precincts seem ripe within the next decade  to "turn." So we need income data, and both income and demographic change data, from 2000 to now for the Columbus metro region. It would be nice to look at the 2000 and 2010 census data for each neighborhood, to get a sense of where the action is, and where things have been relatively quiet due to some barrier between one neighborhood and another that acts as a dam, be it a river, a municipal boundary, or a substantial change in neighborhood SES, or some ethnic barrier and river (Jewish areas tend to be friendly to the infusion of middle class blacks for example).

Ah. I thought a 3 way split of Akron was a bridge too far. As it stands, the final census stats on that CD-11 (Cuyahoga version) are 43.6% white, 47% black, 5.5% hispanic, and 2.3% asian. You be the judge as to whether that will satisfy the VRA here.

The Columbus district will be tricky. As I said, I theorize that a 70% Obama district can be drawn.

I wonder how the GOP will deal with Stivers.



Dave just updated Ohio's data in the app.


As it stands, that CD-11 I drew in post 115 was close to exact as far as the look of the district is concerned, so I won't repost it. Still, any prong to Akron has to come out of some of the deep blue territory I dumped into that CD-11; I guess you can keep Cleveland split between 2 districts and put some of the Cleveland proper in CD-9.


Keep in mind also that the West side of Cuyahoga isn't exactly West Texas pubbie territory. Those precincts and towns are 50/50 or so. They're ok, but not solid enough to anchor a strong Pubbie district. You probably don't want to keep them all together.

This is a first draft of how to deal with NE Ohio. I think it pretty effectively fcks the Dems. If you are going to hold the Dems to 3 CD's, the map must take no prisoners. You just have to use the guillotine. OH-13 is 50.3% black VAP, with 37,000 in "excess" population, pending final census numbers. No doubt, OH-06 (my label for the moment), will need to expand. That will take a bit more work, since what I did was draw based on black percentages, and almost all precincts more than 5% black have been dumped into either OH-11 or OH-06.  It is a useful proxy for partisan behavior, in this part of the world. It just is. OH-13 is 3.9% black by the way. It should be safe.

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It's interesting that you guys are able to get the Dems down to 3 districts in the NE. Imho that is even more of a reason to give the Dems a seat in Columbus and make sure you don't lose any central or western Ohio seats even in a bad year. It would really suck for the pubbies if a few districts flipped in the northeast as well as Columbus. And the trend is in the wrong direction in Columbus for the GOP.

Thus my rather extensive post about Columbus. It needs a lot of work to mitigate the damage. Otherwise the map is just an exercise in foolishness, in the longer term.

By the way, it is not just 3 Dem CD's in NE Ohio. It is 3 CD's in the entire state! We have the OH-09 snake with a double prong at the end, like that instrument you use to shove stuff around in your fireplace, and then the black - white liberal pack (OH-11), and the down and out quite white pack, but 20% black as it sucks up Dem precincts (OH-06).  The map is just a monster Gerry. It's just brutal. But we live in brutal partisan times - so the Pubbies might just do it.

Ask and ye shall receive. This is drawn with the final numbers, screws Stivers, and gives everyone else 'safe' seats, although I'm not sure about the slate green 6th, and I'm not 100% sure about that 14th.

Between Stark County, Tuscawaras County, and the remainder of the Mahoning Valley outside of Youngstown/Warren, I tried to split it between 3 districts. I am also not sure if the orange district has an incumbent in it; someone might have to move.

Columbus is something I'm just not willing to crack anymore.

() (http://img638.imageshack.us/i/final1i.png/)


Keep in mind that Renacci lives in Medina County. I think you just put him in with Latuorette.

Do you know in what town Renacci  lives? I specialize in getting Pubbie incumbents back home. :) Yes, I'm a lawyer, and can hunt it down online through a title company (if he owns a home), but if you know, that would save me some time.

He was the mayor of Wadsworth. I presume he lives there; its in the southeast corner of Medina County.

He's practically neighbors with Sutton.

Well then it will be a piece of cake to take care of him. :)

Yeah, I should have said the north has 3 Dem cd's which in effect means the whole state. But really it should be 3 Dem CD's in the north and the Columbus district. Krazen drew a pretty nice map I think. I have a feeling the GOP may go for the 3 Dem map though, but perhaps one of the other districts could be a swing district.

Krazen's map is nice, but OH-11 falling below 50% black VAP is the thing that I think tanks it. Plus it unleashes 2 or 3 Dem points into Pubbie CD's, and that would be just wrong. :)

How Necessary is a Columbus-Based Democratic District?  I mean, whats the smallest number of Democrats you would have to take out of the Columbus area in order to make the rest safe GOP?

I'm asking that because you might want to make a district that goes from Columbus to somewhere else in order to relieve some pressure where you would really need it (the area is currently represented entirely by Republicans, so its not like its

Also, has anyone considered just giving up on a Cleveland-based VRA black district and redrawing one in the South stretching from Cincinnati to Columbus?  I think you can get one that's about 55% Black and that takes in enough of the Columbus pop to keep the rest of the area GOP.  Sure it would be ugly, but it basically shuts the Democrats out of the rest of Southern and Central Ohio for at least the next 10 years.

I've had some intel that suggests that something like Torie's plan is exactly what the GOP is looking at. There must be a 50% black-VAP CD, and it will link Cleveland to Akron, since it can't be created in Cuyahoga alone. The map will also have a Toledo to Cleveland CD and one other Dem CD based in Youngstown. Columbus will be split into wedges.

The only major difference is that they probably won't wrap LaTourette's district. They assume that he can handle an R+0 district, and there is more concern to boost Renacci to hold off Sutton.

Although it would make more sense to just give the Democrats a safe seat in Columbus, I have a very hard time seeing the Ohio Republican party screwing Stivers (although I agree with Torie that their failure to do so will inevitably backfire).

I intentionally spaced out the pink and gold districts (Renacci and Latuorette) to have room for a channel, to take the Fudge district down to Akron, the Ryan district picking up more Democrats (either Massilliion or something in the Mahoning Valley), and the Toledo and Renacci districts picking up the shed population within Cuyahoga.

I don't like what it does to Renacci though, who has nicely picked up some of Richland and Morrow Counties and doesn't want to drop them.

Does anyone else feel it's far more likely that the Republicans will pack and crack Dems as much as possible--as shown in the maps--than that they will send Republican districts reaching very far afield to pick up safe counties?

The first part of the equation makes more sense to me than others. Republicans don't care what happens to Dems, but as in Wisconsin where a breakup of Milwaukee suburbs to drown Eau Claire in a sea of Republican precincts seems unlikely, so too is rural western and central Ohio legislators agreeing to splintering their districts in order to help out Republican reps in distant parts of the state. Krazen's map may effectively pack Dems, but no Republican wants to represent either the red or yellow districts in northern Ohio. Nor does Delaware County want a rep from Canton. Just my two cents.  

Anything is possible. But if you don't split the Cuyahoga suburban areas, you're basically putting Renacci in Kucinich's district rather than the other way around in what an even or so PVI district. That's also the biggest problem with the Fudge channel method.

Massachusetts Dems, incidentally, seem to have done the same thing. Look at how many districts enter the Boston Metro and the 1st/2nd split.



On another note, Columbus is exactly a CD in population and is 32% McCain.

It's true that the Massachusetts congressional map links far-flung areas, and it's not right, but it happened for different reasons (protecting incumbents as seats were lost) and has a different impact. If we had a more closely-divided legislature, and Dems from Bristol County and the Cape and Islands held the balance in the legislature, they'd never accede to the current map. Instead, we'd have Rep. Marc Montigny.

I hear what you're saying about the need to shore up Republicans once the Dems in the northeast are packed. But I think resistance from the Republican regions needed to shore them up is going to prevent the maximal pack.

Fascinating Muon2. So LaTourette's CD will just hug the PA border and slip past Youngstown on the east, and move down the Ohio River?  That is the only alternative. The final black VAP number kept me in a lot of suspense, and it was really pointless to start drawing until we knew, given the legalities. Actually I guess we still don't know it, except that it is below 50% with Krazen's much more aesthetic (but less efficient) plan, and that Akron is needed.  So you got your way! :)

I wonder if the Pubbies will draw OH-09 the way I drew it, to maximize efficiency. :P If they do, I don't think they need to worry about Sutton, no matter how you draw LaTourette's CD. His Dems have been pretty well scooped up, and some more will be I am quite sure when the final census numbers come in.

Even if the Massachusetts Dems were to draw as Republican a district as possible, it still wouldn't guarantee electing a Republican. The best you could hope for is about an Obama +6 or so district in southeastern Mass. There's less of an excuse when a compact Columbus district would easily elect a Democrat.

Yes, trying to have Pubbie incumbents keep familiar (and friendly) territory is important if it does not hurt efficiency too much, and I do worry about that all the time, and will in OH. But so far all I was doing was eviscerating Dem CD's. How to handle the Pubbie zone comes next. But if my wrap idea for LaTourette is dead, I would like to know that now, before I proceed.

And this map has to be super efficient, particularly if there is to be no Dem CD in Columbus. The Dem pack for its three CD's needs to be pushed, and pushed hard. We cannot be detained by annoying little details such as erosity, respecting county or municipal lines, and so forth. We just need to be driven by the location of the Dems, and nothing much else. This is a redux of what I did to the Philly metro area - another brutal Gerry.

My pink CD picking up the most Pubbie friendly areas of Cuyahoga needs another 225,000 people or so as I recall. It should have a reasonable GOP PVI I would think, particularly after most of the rest of the Dem precincts in Cleveland, and maybe along the snake (such as Berea), are added to CD-09 per the final census numbers. We shall see. Maybe it does need Medina added.

Torie, I think Brittain33 is right.  I know that the map is meant to be as efficient a gerrymander as possible, but I doubt that's the top concern of Ohio Republicans (community/local interests and individual political calculations can easily become higher priorities).  It seems like in this map, and even your PA map go with the assumption that the only priority for state Republicans will be passing the most effective gerrymander possible (although this is certainly one of the top priorities, I doubt it will be as dominant a priority as your maps would require).     

Well, we had a little problem here. I had both OH-13 and OH-14 in yellow, so what I used to call my old OH-13 had twice the number of folks that it should, or close to it. Meanwhile, the software took a bunch of unassigned area in OH-06 and put the population into the Youngstown CD, so its population was overstated by a mere 176,000 people. I hate when that happens!

So needless to say, the wrap is dead. Well actually maybe not, it will just be going the other way, into the OH-14 NE corner CD zone! Here is the problem. I would like OH-13 (my new number for the Youngstown CD), to pick off the Dem precincts in Canton, rather than just suck up a bunch of marginal territory from OH-14 so that the populations equalize. That would be such a waste. So we need to figure out what a Pubbie CD can do to pick up some territory from OH-14, either helping, or at least not hurting, OH-14's partisan numbers.

And which CD gets the Pubbie (well marginal more than Pubbie but whatever) pocket in Cuyahoga that is entered by a single strong or precincts through Cleveland, hugging the Lakewood line at its terminus? Only one can.  Maybe as Krazen did, it needs to be appended to OH-05. In the meantime, OH-16 is a bit over in population, but a mere factor of 2.  LOL.

At this point, I really need detailed partisan data. It is easy enough to just pick off precincts with blacks or Hispanics in them, but we have already done that. We now need to figure out where the Dem and Pubbie whites live, and for that we will need precinct data. It is going to be a bear of a job, because it needs to be done county by county, and some counties have good data in spreadsheet form (like Cuyahoga, plus I found that wonderful newspaper map of the Obama precinct percentages with 10% ranges, so one just needed as an initial matter to follow the blue, and make sure that the darker blues were put into either OH-09 or OH-11, which saved a ton of time), others you need to see a separate freaking page for each precinct, and for others there is no data at all. And in some places the precinct maps (if you can find them), don't match the census blocks used in the Bradlee software very well. It's a nightmare!

If anyone who knows Ohio voting behavior for this white zone that needs to be chopped up, could give me some direction, that would be great. Thanks.

Boy I really feel embarrassed. :P

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The efficiency argument is interesting. By moving Akron precincts from Dem district 13 to Dem district 11, you free up space in Dem district 13, but if you look at it, the Dem areas around Canton can be very easily cracked by central Ohio districts that are already 54+% McCain.


That blue district (Tiberi's 12th) is already 55% McCain. Making it 57% McCain is probably unneeded.

Renacci is the only incumbent next to your pick Cuyahoga district, and he'd be getting all new territory while some other guy has an R+12 district. The distribution of pubbies is just as important as the number; other than Latuorette (who can't be helped much) and Boehner (who gets what he wants) each other guy should have his fair share. I don't see that in your pink district.

The main difference here is that Ohio Republicans have the speaker of the house. Boehner can probably get through whatever maps he wants.

That is a factor in favor of a national strategy, true.

I think maybe OH-10 is the candidate to punch through through the Akron wrap, to pick up folks from OH-14 perhaps. It is going to lose a ton of folks in its southern sector to get OH-06 up to its required population. We may be headed towards a triple chop of Stark County, in tandem with the triple chop of Summit. :P  Or perhaps OH-06 can do it. It is one or the other, and will depend on the partisan numbers. I am glad the Pubbie incumbent in OH-16 does not live in Stark, so I don't have to worry about putting him in some other CD per the Stark slice and dice.

And is the Columbus chop going to be a triple chop or a quad chop?  That is another question.

Stark is a McCain County once you dig out Canton City into OH-13.

Why don't you redraw your map with the updated 2010 census figures in DRA? That should eliminate some guesswork.

What is DRA?

Dave's redistricting app?

I just figured that out now that I see that Ohio has the census numbers now. :) Which means I have to redraw the whole fcking map. Boo!  :(

I wonder if you use the block group option, or the 2010 precincts option, to get the census data. I guess I will find out by trial and error.

Just checking; don't want to read through the entire thread. You're going for 13-3 here?

2010 precincts. Maybe block groups for 2010 are also available for some states, but I think they'll be added later.

I think Torie is.

I'm going with the eliminate Kucinich/Sutton, screw Stivers map, which is 12-4. Stivers gets thrown into a Dem vote sink.

Yes, Muon2 has inside info that that is the Pubbie plan. The Gerry is going to have to be brutal to do it. Terminating Sutton and Kucinich appears to be very doable. Whether a triple or quad chop of Columbus will contain the Columbus Dems, the ones now, and the additional ones in the future, without endangering one or two Pubbie seats that are part of the chop down the road, remains to be seen.

I remember reading on SSP that it's apparently possible to draw a McCain seat in SE Mass, and an Obama by only a few hundred votes one in the NE. Obviously will never happen. I'm kind of skeptical though, I tried a McCain seat in Connecticut and don't think it's possible, I could only get to about 52% Obama.

Republican PVI seat, IIRC, not actually a McCain district. It didn't look too bad, either (whole towns), and had the right population for another, Democratic, seat southeast of it.

Approximate McCain percentages on this map.

Chabot   51% McCain
Schmidt   54% McCain
Turner   53% McCain
Jordan   58% McCain
Latta   52% McCain
Johnson   53% McCain
Austria   56% McCain
Boehner   62% McCain
Kaptur   27% McCain
Gibbs   56% McCain
Fudge   21% McCain
Tiberi   55% McCain
Ryan   26% McCain
Latuor   50% McCain
Stivers   30% McCain
Renacci   53% McCain

How hard would it be to add some extra points to Chabot without weakening Schmidt or Turner (well, Turner's hypothetical successor)?
Jordan and Latta's districts look horrid - since it doesn't serve to make both safe seats, what is the purpose behind that? Something to do with residence? Or would a more reasonable-looking geographic split be even more uneven?
Also, you're taking a bit of a gamble with Johnson's seat - it's not a given that the disconnect between presidential and congressional vote shares in these kinds of areas is gone for good just because it was obliterated in 2010.

Let's see. If the Dem core of Columbus was carried by Obama by 70-30, with 720,000 people, that means the Obama margin was 288,000 (720,000 x .4).  So even if we do a quin chop, with that margin evenly divided, that means each of the 5 chop CD's starts out with an Obama margin of 57,600 votes!  A quad chop is -72,000 each. So all the chop CD's are going to have a tough time even getting to 50% McCain. And if it is much less, than suddenly the CD's become marginal. Krazen, are you sure that the margin for your little Columbus CD was 70-30? That does seem high.

I have a feeling that at best, one of the chop CD's is going to have to be marginal, to have much potential at all to get all of the other chop CD's out of the danger zone. I wonder how much of Boehner's Pubbie PVI  that he currently enjoys, he is willing to give up. It is going to have to be substantially cut. And propping up Schmidt at all is out.  She is going to have to be cut too, and that might put her in political trouble, which is fine with me, but maybe not for the Pubbies, or some of them at least, who just love her red dresses and big stupid mouth.  Is there any way to have one of the chop CD's include Provo, Utah?  Just asking. :P

Columbus itself voted:

107574 McCain
232494 Obama

That's 32% McCain, and there are some conservatives areas in the northwest corner (I think?),  that can be cut out and towns like Bexley added.

Latta lives in Bowling Green (Wood County) and is probably better known in the immediate Toledo area (western Lucas County). Beyond that, I wanted to give Latta the most conservative rurals (Putnam, Allen counties), and pull out the less conservative rurals (Huron county)

I don't think Chabot can be helped much; that said, 51% McCain should be enough given turnout there in midterm years.

Oh yes, the entire population doesn't actually vote does it? My bad! I need a nap. :P

This map puts Gibbs and Tiberi in the same district.

339k turnout in a city that had ~750k people at the time (now 787k) is rather low. National turnout in 2008 was 64%.

Imagine if Columbus Dems started voting....

Well, I assume Obama moved heaven and earth to max Dem turnout there.

Moving right along with my next adventure in math, given your numbers Krazen, if we do a quad chop, to get each quad CD up to a 3 GOP PVI (the minimum acceptable, with 3.5 being better), the balance of the CD's needs to be 55.5% McCain. And we need a pad for Dem growth, so we are really talking about a 4 GOP PVI minimum, and that is about a 56.30% McCain CD for each of the chop CD's that needs to be amassed before hitting the city of Columbus GOP death zone for its final quarter of population. It does not really look good. One of the CD's probably will have to be marginal. Better that, than putting more than one CD in potential competitive play down the road.

Granted, the turnout in Columbus may be a bit lower than outside it, which might give us another 50 basis points of breathing room. We shall see.

In other news, I have the new population numbers up now, the precincts match beautifully, and I am finding a lot of GOP or acceptable precincts in addition to what I found in my previous map to cull from the existing OH-09. I suspect that OH-09 will be able to do a thorough cleansing of the Dem precincts assigned to it to cleanse in Cuyahoga County, just about all of them over 55% Obama that I have as targets. I also found the 4 precincts I wanted to excise from OH-05 in Maumee, and have another 4  or so on deck to dump into it which are between 55%-60% Obama, population permitting. The population drop in the Dem zone outside of Columbus is really, really shocking - considerably more disastrous than in Michigan. Which is what may make this jihad feasible. I found another 3 or 4 precincts in Toledo less than 55% Obama to cut from OH-09. This is going swimmingly. :)  If only Columbus were within reach of the Youngstown CD. If only. Pity.

This is very important, because we need to pump up the Pubbie CD's for their attack on Columbus. We need to push, push and then push some more. If we are doing a Columbus chop, no precinct can be afforded to be "improperly" assigned, thereby losing efficiency.

Update:

The map below reflects the Dem disaster. Just about everything bad in Cuyahoga has been cleansed now, except for a few lightly populated link precincts to the marginally Pubbie white zone. And the population OH-11 still needs (I have not massaged the Eastern edge of it, but the changes will be marginal), plus what the Youngstown CD will need, means that everything anti Pubbie in NE Ohio pretty much will be cleansed, too. In fact, I may run out of Dem precincts to pick up, and one might need to get creative to find more. One Pubbie CD will have to pick up the 234,000 people in the white zone pocket. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which CD shall it be? The pink zone is of uncertain number (because there is "another" CD 10 as well, down in SE Ohio), but that zone is subject to being shared between Pubbie CD's.

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And here is the Toledo side of CD-09, with more modest changes, but now that I know the precinct data exactly, just about everything over 55% Obama is in OH-09, and not OH-05.

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Michigan's redistricting data hasn't been released.  We'll get it next week, at the earliest.  Unlike Ohio, Michigan lost population.  Detroit's population loss might just outpace Cleveland's.  I wouldn't rule it out - many of the 2009 estimates have had large errors, especially in urban areas.

Have you considered giving it to Steve Latourette via the lake Erie Precinct?  He's probably the best Republican to take in more Cleveland suburbs, and it'll probably strengthen his district and free up the Summit-county portion of his district.

This is probably the most complex map I have ever drawn, or will draw. Man it was a bear!  I was going along swimmingly, cheerfully picking  up the precincts I wanted to pick up in Akron to put into OH-11 (which is everything with a significant black percentage (over 10%), which is west of that lime green Magellan Strait cutting through downtown Akron (and it has to be there, because downtown is less black, and except for one precinct rather unpopulated (office buildings). I had to do this, because I just knew that if I cut them back, I would be putting something like 70% Obama precincts in a Pubbie CD, which is obviously not acceptable. So that part of the plan was fixed in stone.

But after finishing, I had a little problem. OH-11 was only 49.5% black VAP! Now what? There were no other black precincts in Akron to pick up that would help. In fact, picking up more would just dilute the black percentage further. There is a block of black precincts next to the Akron Airport, but that is on the east side of the Magellan Strait, and thus OH-11 could not get at them. I tried to move the strait to the east, but that would just shove too many Dem precincts into OH-14, since everything west of the strait obviously cannot go into OH-13, which itself is blocked by the strait. Consequently by moving the strait east,  those would have to be dumped into a Pubbie CD, and so that was out. Uh-oh, there is trouble in River City! Now what?

Since cutting some minority black precincts in Akron was out,  back to Cuyahoga we have to go, to start culling out white precincts from OH-11. That was a long and laborious job, as I hunted and hunted for precincts to cut from OH-11 that were less than 60% Obama. I finally made it, barely, but had to such up each and every precinct at the edges of OH-11 in Cuyahoga County to get there. In the process, I found additionally some pretty good precincts to put into OH-14, but not enough. So I had to suck up a Euclid precinct, and three Pepper Pike precincts that were 55%-58% Obama, and so forth. The end result, is that the eastern edge of OH-11 in Cuyahoga has become quite ragged. But it had to be done.

Why am I bothering with the Magellan Strait? The reason is that I need to have OH-16 (or some other Pubbie CD) go through it to suck up population from OH-14, so that OH-14 can pick up marginal precincts in Warren County or Mahoning or wherever, so that OH-13 is sufficiently stripped of population, that it will be able to suck up the Dem precincts in Canton and so forth. In the end, maybe I don't need it, which would be grand, but I wanted it in place in case I do. We shall see what OH-13 can achieve with its marginal precincts stripped, enabling OH-13, with its shortage of population, to make it up by moving  Summit and so forth to neutralize all the Dem territory around. One doesn't like having marginal precincts in a Dem pack CD. That is not the road to maximum efficiency.

In any event, this 50 basis point shortage in black VAP probably cost me close to a point in efficiency, but it could not be helped. If it turns out that OH-13 runs out of things to do, and it will have marginal precincts irrespective as to whether they are in a zone OH-14 can reach, or elsewhere, as I say, I may be able to jettison the strait, and get some of my lost point back by picking up the black precincts around the Akron airport which are east of the Magellan Strait. But I can't get all of it back. To do that would push OH-11 below 50% VAP black, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Time will tell.

I am so glad I am finished with this particular headache. Oh my! :) I think I will call this the Twin Straits map, since I have two of these puppies, one cutting through downtown Cleveland, and the other cutting through a lightly populated industrial zone in east Cleveland up to Lake Erie and along Lake Erie in Lakewood to the Cuyahoga Pubbie friendly zone. Notice I put one precinct in Lakewood in OH-11, and had the Cuyahoga strait cut south of it. Why? Because that precinct has about 3,200 people (huge precinct), and it is 73% Obama. That simply cannot be permitted of course, so thus that little workaround. :)

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LaTourette will have far too many people to get anywhere near the white Pubbie pocket. In fact, some CD will probably go into his NE corner of Ohio through the green Magellan Strait, so that LaTourette can move heavily into suburban and rural Warren County, and maybe a bit of Mahoning, stripping OH-13 of population, thereby enabling OH-13 can suck up Dem precincts in Canton, and other places as needed. OH-13 needs to include the Youngstown Dem zone of course, the Dem precincts in the Akron area east of the Magellan Strait, the Canton Dem precincts, and maybe go elsewhere, so that the adjacent Pubbie CD's can be pumped it, generating a big enough Pubbie pad to with some measure of Pubbie safety "quadralize" Columbus. That is the plan at least!  

A lot of things need to be done at once, and the objective function as it were to make it happen given all of the constraints is tight, very tight. It will be a very close call, as to whether we achieve all of the Pubbie objectives, which objectives Muon2 tells us that they in fact have. The Pubbies are greedy, and my job is to help their greed keep them in mere pig rather than hog status (pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered). And this map is so complicated, that I am not entirely sure the Pubbies will come up with my little strategy. So, this is one map that I am sure I will be forwarding to Team Boehner. I just don't trust them to do it right. And thus Torie is entering on stage right on this one. :)

One thing to keep in mind when drawing anything in the city of Cleveland is that the wards and precincts have been renumbered since 2008. The area Torie refered to as "Mordor" just north of Parma is really not a 80%+ Democratic area like the precinct results and a precinct map might suggest because this area changed wards. In 2008 results it is wards 15 and 16 (NOT 13!) and about 60% Obama at most. The same thing happens in the far west end of the city (wards 20 and 21 instead of 19).

The most Republican parts of the City of Cleveland are definitely not along the lake in the northeast corner where Voinovich lives. Those areas (the Collinwood neighborhood) are 70%+ black and about 90% Obama. Conveniently for the redistricting, the most Republican parts  of Cleveland are in the area just north of Parma and on the far west end of the city along the Rocky River.

In addition you could shave more of the eastern suburbs off the 11th as well and give them to the 14th. Lyndhurst, Pepper Pike, the northern half of Beechwood, the eastern half of University Heights and the southeastern part of South Euclid are only 50-60% Obama areas. I'd worry less about making LaTourette safe than any of the other Republican incumbents because he has the label of being moderate and tends to attract some Democratic support. Obviously he has to have a reasonable district to win reelection but it doesn't need to be any better than R+0 or D+1.

Hi TJ. Welcome to the forum. Each and every precinct in OH-11, with maybe 2 or 3 exceptions (other than the few precincts which prong down to Akron), is more than 58% Obama, and 97% of them, or something, are over 60%. I have a spreadsheet of the returns, and the precinct labels match the precinct returns perfectly, with the exception of Euclid for some reason.

OH-11 and OH-14 are I think in final form now. OH-13 is a partial draw, but what has been drawn so far, probably won't change. It has reached the edge of the Dem zone in Summit County, and now will prong down over a few Pubbie precincts presumably to Canton, its next stop. The Magellan Strait is gone. It proved unnecessary to use, and also highly inconvenient to use as it turned out. In that pink zone in Cuyahoga County was Garfield Heights, and that was heavily Dem but quite white, and it had to go into OH-11, which really necessitated a maximum black efficiency run for OH-11 into Akron, and the gap would have interfered with that. And OH-13 was now free to pick up any Dem precincts in Akron that OH-13 shed. It made life a lot easier.

By the way, the most heavily black area of Akron that was put into OH-11 (almost all black), looks like it kind of hugs a river doesn't it?

The main trick was getting OH-14 to the right population, without getting any plus 55% Obama precincts. It was boxed in by that natural Dem bridge of OH-13 from Youngstown to Akron, and that marked its Southern frontier. So it had to fight to get enough population in Summit, and that ultimately necessitated moving the OH-11 southern prong down to Akron a bit west, to give OH-14 some more room. And then I noticed some Dem precincts there, and so OH-11 had to pick them up, and lose some more in Akron, and on and on it went!  :)

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The map draw continues.  The Stark County map shows in brown the over 56% Obama precincts, and those in pink are the under 56% Obama precincts. Because OH-13 has a bit of excess population, I have started to put in "unassigned," precincts that are between 56% and 58% Obama (that would be the white precincts  precincts in Stark County, and there may be some more of them, that I gave to OH-13, which will have to go back out, along its edges).  In that regard, I am now putting anything under 56% Obama into a Pubbie CD vis a vis OH-13, rather than using the 55% cut off that I was using.

I am doing all of this in case I need to cut out of OH-13, and put into a Pubbie CD, 55% to 58% Obama precincts in order  to get OH-13's population down to where it needs to be.  This assumes that I can't find enough, or much if any, under 56% Obama precincts in the OH-13 portion of Mahoning County to cut them out of OH-13, and put in OH-06 (and I suspect that there will not be many, since the CD line between OH-13 (old OH-17) and OH-06 in Mahoning if I recall correctly was pretty much the demarcation line between where the marginal territory in Mahoning ended, and the heavily Dem area of Mahoning began). So I may have to cull OH-13 around the edges from where it is now outside of Mahoning, to get its population down. But I can't do that on its northern edges very well next to OH-14, because OH-14 is trapped by its two Dem pack CD neighbors, OH-11 and OH-13. So,  moving its southern line down farther south a bit, will screw up its population, and I would really like to avoid doing that.

Boy is Stark County polarized, which is good for gerrymandering purposes, since it makes the Dem pack more effective. However, on the other hand, you can see now can't you, where the land bridge will be to get OH-13 from where it is now, to where it needs to go in Canton, right? Which means that there will be a horseshoed shape Pubbie pocket between the two prongs of OH-13. The may create a problem, because given how polarized Stark is, and to some extent the southern Pubbie suburbs of Akron, that pocket has the potential of being very heavily GOP, in fact so heavy, that whichever CD fills it, might get overly Pubbied up. So either that CD needs to find some Dem area to neutralize to gets its GOP percentage down, or the map will get another scar on it as two Pubbie CD's go into the pocket. Or maybe the CD which fills the pocket will be a long snake that is one of the CD's to quadralize Columbus, taking more than its share of those heavily Dem precincts. But that would make the map look well - really butt ugly. Hopefully that can be avoided. We shall see.

And so it goes: one problem gets solved, and another arises. Also note that Summit County is going to be a quinchop!  Which creates a certain order to things. We have Summit as a quinchop, Franklin County as a quad chop (probably), Stark is going to step up the plate to be a trichop (well actually it may well be a quadchop too, if OH-06 sticks its nose into its SE corner, in which event we will have to hope we can effect a trichop elsewhere, just so that we have a nice integer staircase up of chop "numerology," without missing one) , and of course the will be multiple bichops, and then we actually have some counties that will be entirely in just one CD. What a novel concept! :)   5-4-3-2-1 - I like it - chop, chop, chop! :P

Hopefully OH-16 is adequately Pubbie; it should be, but it needs to be checked. Heck it may even be over-Pubbied, in which event it will need to be moved a bit to find more marginal territory. Hopefully not however, if it is in the right partisan range. One must admit that it is a kind of pretty CD, right?  :) Moreover, it is fairly important that the southeast corner of OH-16 be left alone if possible, because that is where the incumbent lives (and he was mayor of Wadsworth to boot (in the SE corner of Medina County), so it is probably an area in which he "over-performs." I would like to keep the western and northwestern Republican suburbs of Akron that are near Wadsworth in OH-16 if possible.

The moral of the story on that is that you adjust lines between Pubbies CD's to to make the map look prettier to the extent you can (without screwing up the partisan CD numbers), so as to mitigate the unaesthetic erosity of the Dem pack CD's. That way, the map looks at least facially less of a "go for the max gerrymander, taking no prisoners," than it really is. With luck, it may even fool a few folks when looking at the map, who don't involve themselves in these sorts of partisan games. It is just good for Pubbie PR.  Make sense?  :)

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The 3 Dem pack seats are completed (along with OH-14), and if the partisan numbers are OK, also OH-06 and OH-16.

Once I calculate the numbers for the 3 Dem pack seats, we will know the PVI for the balance of the state, and whether it is feasible for Columbus to be prudently chopped, assuming the PVI can be reasonably evenly distributed between the 13 CD's slated for Pubbies. My back of the envelope calculations are that the GOP 2008 PVI for the 13 Pubbie seats if the the 3 Dem pack seats are 70-30 Obama overall, would be a GOP PVI of 6.6, and if the 3 Dem pack seats are 65-35 on average, it would be about 5.8 (assuming turnouts are relatively even across the state). My guess is that the numbers are somewhere in-between 70-30 and 65-35, so call it a GOP PVI of say 6. In short the chop of Columbus should work absent severe distribution problems between the Pubbie seats (unlikely).  In that event, the Pubbies lose no points in Ohio, as opposed to the anticipated one - assuming they go for something reasonably close to the max gerrymander.

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Just plain beautiful, Torie. :) Definately outdoing all your previous mastery at screwing over good government. :P

Here is a clean-looking 12-4 map which keeps the Columbus crack and puts urban Canton in Tim Ryan's district, but doesn't go the full 13-3 route.

http://twitpic.com/4af7sr

A 13-3 map is going to end badly, I just know it. If the pubbies go full gerrymander like Torie's map, they might be able to just hold on, but I doubt it will be that efficient. Probably too many disparate interests to make a precise map like the one Tories is drawing to be practical. And it really needs to be that perfect to have a chance of holding, and even then it's not guaranteed.

I don't know about that. A plus 6% GOP PVI for the Pubbie zone (my estimate of where it will end up) leaves a fair amount of pad. (Remember that the state of Ohio starts out with a GOP PVI of 1.5%.) A 4% GOP PVI would be good enough, assuming even Pubbie distribution in the Pubbie zone, which of course it won't be. For starters, we probably will need to make sure Boehner has at least a 6% GOP PVI. We don't want him to by "Folyized."  In any event, some of my erosity can be done away with, but they will have to do my little cut through Cleveland, or it won't work at all. I do suspect to see both the Akron and Canton cuts as well, with Akron of course being a given. In any event, I will try to make the balance of the map pretty for you, so be happy sbane. I am really proud of OH-13. I spent a lot of time on it. :P

Pathetic - it sucks.

My linguistic sensibilities demand "Foleyfied".

Agreed. It doesn't matter how gerrymandered the state is, 13-3 just won't work. It'll be 10-6 or 9-7 by 2014. If they make a 12-4 map now they can keep it all decade if done right.

The state's not trending any way. So, vile as the northeast map is, it should hold unless Johnson fouls up.
Columbus (or even Cincy, but R's can always regain lost seats there) is another matter. Can't speak before we actually see a finished Columbus Chop map.

I think cutting up the northeast is a good idea (seems like an area that will swing around only to be dissapointed by both parties), but messing around with Columbus is going to burn the Republicans. The pubbies in PA seem to be more reasonable. Why is that?

Ohio Republicans haven't actually commented on much. We don't know if they're actually trying to do a 13-3 map; they've actually hinted that the aren't, or at least that such will be 'incredibly difficult'.

I think a 13-3-1 map might be in the realm of possibility, and it could be a greedy map, but not exactly a suicidal map.

here is my map

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the top is of course a view of the entire state followed by a view of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus Areas.

Dark Blue district in Hamilton County is District 1. This is a 64.4% White District. Steve Chabot is the incumbent here. Should be a swing district most years.

Green district is District 2. Basically takes some areas on the Ohio River east of Cincinnati and absorbs some areas from CD 6. This is the whitest district at 93% white. Mean Jean is the incumbent in what will probably be a safe republican district.

Purple district is District 3. Basically takes in most of the Dayton area and some parts to the southeast. This is a 78.8% White District and would have Steve Austria (if he decides to run here) going up against Mike Turner in the primary. Dayton is a fairly democratic city, but the area surrounding it is just as republican. Lean GOP

Red District is District 4. Similar to the old District 4. Except that it takes in some areas of Columbus. Nowhere near as republican as it used to be. Probably only in the R+6 to R+8 range. This is an 84.1% White District and Jim Jordan is the incumbent. Likely GOP

Yellow district is District 5. Again, fairly similar to the old CD 5 except that it takes in some parts of Lucas County. This is a 91.7% White district. Politically, this is probably similar to the old 5th District at around an R+7. Likely GOP

Turquoise District is District 6. Expands and takes in the Canton, Massillon area. This is a 91% White District. Bill Johnson is the incumbent here. I'm guessing this would be a tossup district.

Silver district is District 7. No incumbent lives here, but Steve Austria may run here as most of his district is located here. This is a 87.4% White District and a likely republican seat.

The light purple district is District 8. Basically takes in the southwestern corner of the state and easily the most republican in the state. This is an 87.6% White District. Current House Speaker and soon-to-be Minority Leader John Boehner is the incumbent in this district.

Light blue district is District 9. Basically takes in the heavily democratic city of Toledo and some areas to the east. This is a 73.8% White District. Marcy Kaptur has survived 1994 and 2010, so she's here for life.

In the cleveland area, the pink district in the central part of Cuyahoga county is District 10. This is a 47.8% White, 41.9% Black, 6.1% Hispanic, 2.1% Asian, 1.9% Other, and .2% Native American District. This is easily the most democratic district in the state. Marcia Fudge is the incumbent here.

The Light Green district in the northeast corner is District 11. This is an 83.1% White District and takes in a lot of areas formerly in the 17th District. Steve LaTourette is the incumbent here. Tossup District.

The light blue district is District 12. Pat Tiberi gets a good deal with the dem precincts in Columbus all removed. It takes in a good deal of the old 18th District and he would face Bob Gibbs in the primary here. This is a 93.4% White District. Safe Republican

Tan colored district in Cleveland/Akron area is District 13. This is an 84.1% White district and Kucinich would most likely face Sutton in a primary here. Safe Democrat.

Puke colored district is District 14. This takes in the Youngstown/Niles area. This is an 83.2% White district and Tim Ryan is the incumbent here. Safe Democrat.

In the Columbus Area the orange district is District 15. This is a 62.4% White District. Steve Stivers is the incumbent here. Mary Jo Kilroy may challenge him in a rematch. Tossup.

The light green district in north central Ohio is District 16. This is a 92% White District and Jim Renacci is the incumbent. Likely GOP

Given how badly the Republicans have been polling in the state lately, as well as the state's propensity for wild, volatile swings due to the popularity or lack thereof of a single individual, if they draw a 13-3 map would likely shoot themselves in the foot.

Torie: if the VRA doesn't apply in Ohio why did you put so much time and effort into making OH-11 majority Black?

My gerrymander is going to be moderate/tempered. I even packed Columbus' minorities, students and white collar liberals into a district just to be safe. Stivers(sp?) would be an easy target for Democrats anyways even if his district stayed in its current configuration.

edit: I see what Torie is saying now, gerrymandering ohio further is a pain.

When looking at this map, I stand humbly before my God.  The image to me is transfixing. It contains so much information on so many levels.  For starters, for this neck of the woods, just look how seamless the muni boundaries track SES, partisan affiliation, and yes race.  I drew the boundaries ignoring muni boundaries really, and just look, just look, how almost precisely I followed them! What does that tell you?  And thanks Dave Bradlee for putting up the municipal lines so that what is in my mind, is now revealed! :)

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I am putting this up as the final image of my Dem pack, before I do the calcs to know how many Pubbie points I have to spread around in the balance, to know more clearly the parameters for the Pubbie CD's of the Goldilocks zone. That zone varies from state to state.

Only the preclearance requirement doesn't apply.

It's a combo of political expedience (the GOP-black politician entrepreneur alliance thing on this decennial gerry thing is always fascinating to watch), and legal caution, so it is a done deal, that unless the OH-11 prong to Akron itself makes the map vulnerable (no it does not) of course it will be done by the Pubbies!  So let it be done; it is so written.

This is how I did it without the OH-11 Akron prong:
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Thoughts?

If the Ohio GOP is smart, they won't try the 13-3 dummymander in waiting. 12-4 would be much safer and one seat lost is worth less than four seats lost down the road.

I am pretty confident now that the GOP can safely hold the Dems to 3 seats in Ohio. I have mapped it out. By the way, after some further massaging, OH-16 in its Cuyahoga portion, about 200,000 voters, is close to even in its Obama-McCain numbers. To do that, I had to explore Toledo in more depth, and found about 15 precincts to chop out of OH-09, that escaped me, because you have to cut through an anti Pubbie precinct to get to them. That was key. It allowed me to cut out 15 60% plus Obama precincts from OH-16, and dump them into OH-09 in turn. It rather magically unlocked another Pubbie point that I did not know was there. It does make the Toledo look like somebody stabbed it on the south side of the city, but stuff happens. And the partisan numbers for the entirety of OH-16 should be about spot on, and quite safe for the Pubbie. Sutton will move on to other work; he will not have a chance. So the twin termination of Sutton and Kucinich is a done deal, as long as you go for the max (yes, you have to have erose lines; deal with it, and it will happen). Now I am mapping out the attack on Columbus. I have carved out the max Pubbie areas to append to the four CD's which will do the quad chop on Columbus. This map I suspect will be pretty air tight. Stay tuned.

As a lagniappe, here is what I think is my final for OH-16. It's just beautiful, perfect!  I spent a lot of time on it, and it paid off I think. And notice that how it ends up looking square. That is important. I massage stuff, to make it seem like this is the map that should be drawn, following county lines meticulously (unless it is necessary not to, to get the partisan numbers where I want them, or of course it is a Dem pack CD! Or if the need to spread the Pubbie PVI just right requires a bichop or trichop, or there is no other way to get the partisan numbers into the sweet spot.

The goal of course is to max the odds that Obama, even if he wins re-election, will for the balance of his tenure, have to deal with a GOP House. And that is my goal, and if I have any influence at all, I hope to increase the odds a tad that that will happen. I mean that.

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Section 2 does apply, and the USDOJ has been active recently in bring complaints in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, such as  Euclid, where they've produced a really ugly district following the Interstate and picking off apartments along the interstate, but stopping a block or so from the city limits so another district can get to south of the freeway.  And since Cleveland has had a black district since 1969 it is unlikely to go away now.

I am pretty confident now that the GOP can safely hold the Dems to 3 seats in Ohio. I have mapped it out. By the way, after some further massaging, OH-16 in its Cuyahoga portion, about 200,000 voters, is close to even in its Obama-McCain numbers. The partisan numbers for the entirety of OH-16 should be about spot on, and quite safe for the Pubbie. Sutton will move on to other work; he will not have a chance. So the twin termination of Sutton and Kucinich is a done deal, as long as you go for the max (yes, you have to have erose lines; deal with it, and it will happen). Now I am mapping out the attack on Columbus. I have carved out the max Pubbie areas to append to the four CD's which will do the quad chop on Columbus. This map I suspect will be pretty air tight. Stay tuned.

As a lagniappe, here is what I think is my final for OH-16. It's just beautiful, perfect!  I spent a lot of time on it, and it paid off I think.  And notice that how it ends up looking square. That is important. I massage stuff, to make it seem like this is the map that should be drawn, following county lines meticulously (unless it is necessary not to, to get the numbers where I want them, unless of course it is a Dem pack CD! Or the need to spread the Pubbie PVI just right requires a bichop or trichop, or there is no other way to get the partisan numbers into the sweet spot).

I had to do a number on Toledo to get there, because I wanted to get about fifteen 60% plus Obama precincts out of OH-16, and to do that, I needed to cut into Toledo some more vis a vis OH-09. So looking more closely, I found that if you stab trough a heavy Omaba precinct on Toledo's south side, on the other side of it is this linear line of GOP plus PVI precincts or close to it, running almost all the way to the Lucas County line to the east. So now Toledo has been stabbed; it's dead.

One other minor detail. Kaptur has lost so many precincts in Lucas, that I wonder if Sutton will challenge her in a primary. The center of gravity of OH-09 is not really in Lucas County anymore. It is more Cuyahoga oriented. I just stripped Lucas County to death. The key might be the Dem precincts in OH-09 in Lorain County;will they go to Sutton or Kaptur? It would be a delightful bonus if Kaptur is tanked. I can't think of one public issue as to which I agree with her. It is pretty much the null set.

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Thank you. Among other things, I realized I dropped an "e,"  but decided to let you point that out for me. Thanks again!  :P

I certainly wouldn't have replied just for the "e". But "foleyfied" sounds like a word the English language needs. :DSutton will likely lose the primary to Ryan. Kaptur will likely lose the primary to Kucinich.
This is presuming (just for the sake of the argument) that they all run, of course.

Okay, I admit I framed this answer that way largely for aesthetic reasons. Kaptur would beat Kucinich, and Sutton is, I think, in your lawngreen pubbie seat, but near the Akron end.

Dennis's home base in that south Cleveland box (and elsewhere along the Dem pack southern borderland in Cuyahoga is now largely in OH-11). Much of the rest, is now in OH-16. Sutton per your comment does indeed live in the wrong zip code. But having said that,  the most Dem precincts in Dennis land are now in OH-09. Can Kaptur really appeal to all those voters in Cleveland and Lakewood?  Maybe Sutton will move. And/or Dennis will move, but Dennis is done. He won't get any votes in Lucas, except a few odd nutters, in a Dem primary.

A Kaptur vs. Kucinich race would be amazing. The longest serving woman in the house vs. Dennis Kucinich (One of my least favorite Democrats in the house, despite the fact that I agree with him on a WHOLE lot). Kaptur would have Toledo locked and Kucinich would obviously have certain parts of Cuyahogo locked but that race would be a very interesting one for this state.

Here is the number I did on Kaptur, in Kapturville; cruel really.

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It's not at all obvious how aggressive a gerrymander should be. It's certainly not as simple as "draw a map that will be safe for the whole decade".

In good years for the GOP, Torie's map would likely be 13-3. In particularly bad years, it could easily be 3-13. But that doesn't tell us anything in and of itself, because we haven't put a value on an additional GOP Congressman as a function of how many seats the GOP holds. If you think it's important to have a strong "buffer" against Democratic waves in order to reduce what a disunified Democratic Congress could do (e.g. pass ObamaCare),  then you'd weight this highly. However, perhaps you would prefer to weaken this in exchange for an additional GOP House member in GOP waves, which could potentially be enough to pass a controversial bill or override a veto.

Neutral-ish years (where control of the House is at stake) are also tricky. It depends on how much variance in the Congressional vote is determined by PVI. Currently, this appears to be on the rise (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/2010-an-aligning-election/[/url), but there is nonetheless still a good chance that Democrats could win in Republican-leaning district otherwise neutral years. Conceding a seat to shore up all other districts would reduce these chances, but it should do so by more than one expected seat.      

This paper on optimal gerrymandering (http://www.stanford.edu/group/peg/Papers%20for%20call/Gerrymandering%20-%20FriedmanHolden.pdf) may be helpful for mappers (warning: math).

I am pretty confident now that the GOP can safely hold the Dems to 3 seats in Ohio. I have mapped it out. By the way, after some further massaging, OH-16 in its Cuyahoga portion, about 200,000 voters, is close to even in its Obama-McCain numbers. The partisan numbers for the entirety of OH-16 are about spot on, and should be quite safe for the Pubbie. We broke through the GOP +4% PVI barrier (close to 5 now that Wayne County faxed me the 2008 precinct numbers so I was not constrained to having to interpolate from the 2010 precinct numbers, plus I missed the town of Rittman, now added, which was worth about 25 basis points to the cause, and had OH-09's Parma precincts in the OH-16 totals by mistake, and excising them added another 25 basis points), which is the goal. Sutton should move on to other work; he probably will not have a chance. So the twin termination of Sutton and Kucinich is a done deal, as long as you go for the max (yes, you have to have erose lines; deal with it, and it will happen). Now I am mapping out the attack on Columbus. I have carved out the max Pubbie areas to append to the four CD's which will do the quad chop on Columbus. This map I suspect will be pretty air tight. Stay tuned.

As a lagniappe, here is what I think is my final for OH-16. It's just beautiful, perfect!  I spent a lot of time on it, and it paid off I think.  And notice that how it ends up looking square. That is important. I massage stuff, to make it seem like this is the map that should be drawn, following county lines meticulously (unless it is necessary not to, to get the numbers where I want them, unless of course it is a Dem pack CD! Or the need to spread the Pubbie PVI just right requires a bichop or trichop, or there is no other way to get the partisan numbers into the sweet spot).

I had to do a number on Toledo to get there, because I wanted to get about fifteen 60% plus Obama precincts out of OH-16, and to do that, I needed to cut into Toledo some more vis a vis OH-09. So looking more closely, I found that if you stab trough a heavy Omaba precinct on Toledo's south side, on the other side of it is this linear line of GOP plus PVI precincts or close to it, running almost all the way to the Lucas County line to the east. So now Toledo has been stabbed; it's dead.

One other minor detail. Kaptur has lost so many precincts in Lucas, that I wonder if Sutton will challenge her in a primary. The center of gravity of OH-09 is not really in Lucas County anymore. It is more Cuyahoga/Lorain oriented. I just stripped Lucas County to death. The key might be the Dem precincts in OH-09 in Lorain County;will they go to Sutton or Kaptur? It would be a delightful bonus if Kaptur is tanked. I can't think of one public issue as to which I agree with her. It is pretty much the null set.

By the way, notice the huge turnout! Ohio was viewed as close to ground zero in 2008, along with a couple of other states, and both parties really pushed the numbers up hard. Interesting.

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Interestingly, Stu Rothenburg pegs Renacci as a weak incumbent who benefited inordinately from the wave. He also picks out Buerkle and Ellmers as behaving like one-term wonders, and Dold and Meehan as strong reps.

This is the best we can do for him. Every precinct, every precinct, has been picked to max his GOP numbers (subject to  his CD not interfering with the larger scheme of leashing the Dems to 3 CD's in Ohio). I think it should be enough to scare away a serious Dem predator. Oh wait, I have not included OH-16's portion of Lorain County into the stats yet! My bad! Stay tuned.

Torie, are you sending the maps you make to the people that decide redistricting, at all?

I have to believe Renacci would be in trouble against a Cuyahoga democrat (not Kucinich!) under that map.

Without question, in fact, I could  even see Renacci losing in 2012 in the district that map gives him.

Yes, that is the intent. I have been so busy lately with my real estate projects and the WSJ article thing, that I have not yet submitted any. The first one to submit is Indiana, which is in final form using the census numbers. For PA, I was hoping for partisan numbers to be entered into the Bradlee software, to update my map with the census numbers. But that one is a bear. The only CD I have updated is of course my signature one, mentioned in the WSJ article, PA-14. Wisconsin is finished too, but I am not sure I have the final census numbers, or just the updated ACS numbers or whatever it's called. Ditto for Michigan. It will be interesting to see how close the maps adopted are to mine. I suspect they will be pretty close!  The big imponderable is how to do the Columbus chop in Ohio. That will take a lot of thought - and sensitivity.

And I am pretty good at getting folks to listen to me. I am very pushy! :)

Well guys, that is fine if you think Renacci will be bagged. Hopefully you will be successful in persuading the Dems to dump several million into OH-16 trying. Go for it!  In the meantime, notice that I have OH-16's GOP PVI almost up to 5 now; +4.92% to be exact. :P

Oh, and OH-11 clocks in at 84% Obama. In fact, there are about 10 precincts in Cleveland  where McCain got zero votes, zip, nada, nothing.  And these are real precincts of some size (you know like 592 Obama, 0 McCain sort of thing). You would thing at least a voter or two, would just have punched the wrong box by mistake, but no they didn't. Sad.

In any event, with any luck the 3 Dem pack CD's will hit 70% or maybe even exceed it, and that would be a beautiful thing. :)

Here is my latest innovation in matrix charting. The key number to look at is the bolded one in the bottom right hand corner. As we draw the CD's, probably in the order that I listed them going forward, that number will more and more represent the GOP PVI for it's quad chop of Columbus. It would be nice by the time we get down to the four quad chop CD's if that number were around a 5% GOP PVI, with 5.5% or even 6.0% just that much better. The next CD to do the calculations on is OH-14, which I suspect will have a GOP of  2%-3% or so perhaps [it is GOP PVI +4.01%], pushing the number in the lower right hand corner up a tad, and then of course it will go up to the zone it will more or less stay in, after the numbers from the two remaining Dem pack CD's, OH-13 and OH-09, are calculated. It should be interesting. This will give us close to the final answer as to the prudence of the GOP's apparently planned quad chop of Columbus.

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The final GOP PVI with which to beef up OH-01 and effect the quad chop of Columbus is GOP +6.7%. Not bad - not bad at all. The GOP plan is going to work!  :)

And now OH-10 is tentatively completed, as I dump into it the most marginal counties as it approaches the "Big C,"  saving the most heavily Pubbie zones for the task ahead.

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Do you have 2004 Bush/Kerry numbers for your OH-6? Four of those counties swung away from the Dems between 2004 and 2008, and the Obama Presidential numbers in Appalachia (which the non-Canton parts of the district are) don't correlate well with congressional voting.

I don't, but they would be easy to generate, since OH-10 is mostly whole counties (unusual for me I know).  But the Charlie Cook PVI for the old OH-18 was +7 GOP for 2008, and +15 GOP for 2004, so the swing against McCain was 8 points versus 5 for the nation, and my version of OH-10 takes in territory that is not all that different from the old OH-18.  It could be Pubbied up a bit more, by taking in the south central Ohio white zone (in lieu of Ross and Pike Counties, but I might want that white territory for other purposes, when I play my games with the Cincinnati area. What to do about that Schmidt woman is going to be a headache. Is there any way to get her to retire I wonder?  She is crimping my act a bit, and I am casting covetous eyes on some of her suburban Cincy territory.

Johnson's district is no more McCainish than Renacci's, on less traditional Republican territory. How do commentators and whatnot peg Johnson so far? Strong? Weak?
At least he doesn't have Renacci's problem of a competent Democratic incumbent. Your OH-16 sort of has PA-17 written all over it if things go even a tiny bit of wrong.

Johnson is considered pretty weak from what I understand.

OH-16 cannot get any more Pubbie - period. It's boxed. Well, I suppose you could do something crazy, and have OH-05 go into Cuyahoga to grab some of OH-16's precincts in the south central zone of Cuyahoga, and some of Rennaci's home county of Medina, and than have OH-16 grab the rest of Wayne, and steal Gibbs' home county of Holmes (his CD is my OH-10), but that is just not happening. If Renacci loses, some Pubbie down the road will probably take out Sutton. And while Sutton is in, he will have to vote a lot like Altmire, or he will be bagged in short order. So don't worry, be happy. All is well with the world. This game is about affecting public policy, as much as GOP numbers, and this gets the job done I think.

Pubbieing up OH-16 also degrades some of the Pubbie muscle tone I need for the karate chop on Columbus, and I am very protective of that muscle tone - very protective. I want the quad chop CD's to have GOP PVI's of 6+, and I mean to get there.

Oh, yes, OH-06 has heavily GOP suburban Canton, and somewhat less heavily GOP south suburban Akron, and that has been "traditionally Pubbie" since about 1856.

I was thinking of OH-6, the former Strickland/Wilson district with those four counties along the Ohio river that swung against the Dems--the former Space district is beyond my expectations for a Dem to pick-up.

You're right about Johnson getting areas around Canton, of course. Forgot to take that into account. (And for the last time: Betty Sutton takes the female third person personal pronoun. :P )
It does make me wonder, but this is really for after your map is finished: What's the safest map that R's can draw themselves, chopping Columbus but throwing one of their northern congresscritters under the bus and eliminating only one of Sutton and Kucinich (I presume that would end up drawing them into a single district together)? As I said, for afterwards. Please finish this. :) I ask mostly because it does seem quite possible that the three northern D's plan would be rejected as too dangerous, if this is the best you can do.
(The Columbus chop is a necessary condition to any 4 northern Ds map, obviously - the GOP is not going to voluntarily give up both abolished seats.)

I don't understand, then. If it's so heavily Pubbie, why is it when combined with traditionally Democratic Appalachian areas that swung to McCain in '08, it's only at 51% McCain?

Because almost everything else in OH-06 is marginal in PVI terms (mostly the tonier suburban areas of Youngstown and Warren (well as tony as it gets for that metro zone, which ain't much), except for Columbia County, or leans Dem PVI, such as Jefferson and Monroe Counties, or is heavily Dem, to wit Belmont County. 

Ok, and if these areas swung Republican in 2008 in common with other Appalachian-steel areas, what are the implications for the viability of a 13-3 map based on this district's PVI being above your benchmark?

I'm going to be direct, because I want to discuss it. I find what you're doing to be amazing as a thought experiment to pack Dems in the smallest number of districts and redistribute the remaining territory along a somewhat arbitrary line of "safety." I think the maps are beautiful illustrations of what can be done with data. But no real map is going to go to this extent, no matter how seriously people take Republican leadership, no matter how many arms Boehner twists.

It's not that I'm biased as a Dem or that I lack balls or whatever, or I fail to appreciate why this year is different and why Republicans simply must do it. This is just not the map that people draw. I don't see anything in Pennsylvania or even Maryland that looks as attenuated and erose as the lines here, doing multiple one-precinct isthmuses to link groups of white voters and splitting municipalities in many places. I also don't see Republican legislators giving up coherent blocks of geography to represent amorphous districts designed with PVI in mind first. I think too many legislators share the common revulsion with extreme gerrymandering that strikes on sight that most of us have outgrown. Most of all, I don't think Republicans are going to draw themselves districts that are as close to the margins as OH-10 and OH-6 in your map, no matter what argument you can present, because they don't want to be at risk in good years or in bad years, and a bad year would wipe out your Republican delegation like Hamlet's family in Act V.

I believe you are coming up with the solution that needs to be done to create a hypothetical "13-3" map. And that is why I believe there will be no 13-3 map in Ohio.

Hey, where does Mrs. Sutton live again? Was it west suburban Akron?  I tell you what I'm going to do if that is so - I will move her to OH-13 (heck she already may have been put there, but I doubt that she lives in the rattier burbs of Akron, much less Akron itself), and she can run against Ryan! How about that?  :P

Well your premise is wrong. They did not swing "Republican in 2008."  Johnson is the next best thing to totally safe, and his home base is in suburban Youngstown, and now he does not have to drive so far to visit the perimeters of his CD. Mr. Johnson is going to be delirious with joy with his CD. I am sure he will add me to his Christmas card list.

Well, then notify Dave Leip his atlas is wrong for showing the four counties from Columbiana south swinging blue from 2004 to 2008, and trending deep blue. That's my source. You must be misinterpreting "swinging" as "voting." The Indy suburbs swung heavily Democratic in 2008, but they didn't vote for Obama, and since you're assessing districts on winning percentage rather than a binary win/loss, the distinction matters.

Haha.  Yes I see that now. But you know what that is mostly? No, it isn't the tonier burbs of that rust belt dump trending GOP I bet. Rather, it is the rapid collapse of population in the low SES zones of that place (all in OH-13 of course) which is generating the trend. I just bet you.

I didn't think it was. It was working class white Democratic voters declining to support Obama for President. Whether this constitutes a Republican trend across the board that Pubbie congressmen can count on or a one-off blip that applies to races with an African-American (or otherwise "other") nominee, well, I'm not hiding my cards on how I feel.

Under any strong 4 district plan, the 4th district has to go in Columbus, which is both more Democratic and faster growing than any 4th district in the North would be.

I agree completely with this part, and I'd like to hear Torie's response to this as it could easily be the death of this map were proposed, imo.

GA map, pre-2006. Dems pulled a gerrymander just like Torie's suggesting for Ohio.

example, Democratic district:

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There are not many white working class Dems in OH-06. It is a quite a white middle class district.

OH-06 cannot easily be made more Pubbie anyway (perhaps a half of point), so the issue is moot anyway.  In any event, the old Canton CD trended one point less Dem than the nation, and the Youngstown CD and the Ohio River CD trended 5 points less than the nation. It would be interesting to look at the numbers in Canfield, which is where the bourgeoisie lives in the Youngstown area. I suspect the GOP trend was far less there, and my new OH-06 is more like Canfield, and a lot less like the old OH-06 and OH-17, which trended 5 points to the GOP. In short, my new OH-06 has an entirely new and far more upscale demographic profile.  OH-18, now in general my OH-10, also trended but one point to the GOP, so I don't think that is in play much either vis a vis this issue.

What do you make of the median household and family incomes in Columbiana, Jefferson, and Belmont County, home to 250,000 people in your OH-6 (not counting that last county on the end, which is a non-entity and has no people), compared to those of middle-class counties like Delaware and Geauga Counties?

It's low. Similar to that in counties to the southwest and west, far from Columbus. This is Appalachia. Very, very white, certainly. I had a friend from college who grew up in Columbiana County, it was a very difficult place to be if you were interested in books or anything resembling upward mobility. His father had worked in a steel mill, lost his job, and then went back to work in a different kind of steel mill making significantly less money.

I grant that you clearly know more about the other ~65% of the district than I do; perhaps the Youngstown and Canton suburbs are enough to make this a safe Republican district at 51% McCain. I think this gets into what one would consider safe here. I accept what you say about how it can't be made any safer, not with everything else that's being done--but this is why Ohio is unlikely to try to squeeze down to 3 Dem districts.

A safe seat is a seat that can be won comfortably in a bad year for the party in question; any other definition is stretching the language beyond meaningful use, I think.

Betty Sutton lives in Copley Township on Royal Rock Road (in Copley Township Precint O on Dave's App), just west of Akron and just SE of where route 77 and route 21 meet. She is currently in the green district but moving her to the yellow one would only require moving a couple precincts. I'm not sure who would win a primary between her and Ryan now that the yellow district will be more an Akron/Canton district than a Youngstown one. I would doubt she'd like the green district very much because it has neither Akron nor Lorain in it but she could always move there if she thinks she can't beat Ryan in a primary. The Alliance/Canton arm of the yellow district would also have the added bonus of putting former Democratic Rep. John Boccieri in it as well. Kucinich would have the choose between the Toledo district and the green one, which means he's probably done either way since I highly doubt he'd beat Kaptur in a primary. Kucinich is the weakest incumbent Democrat in Ohio. He only got 53% of the vote in 2010 in his old district and I'd bet there are plenty of Cuyahoga County Democrats who'd rather have Kaptur.

First, welcome to the forum TJ, and thank you that one of your first posts is one that is so helpful to me!  :)

I found out that Sutton lived in Copley, but thanks for saving me the work of going through channels to get her address. Anyway, the deed is now done, and OH-16 shed two precincts in Copley, with a total McCain percentage of about 47%, and picked up two more 60% McCain precincts in Wayne, so that OH-16 got 4 basis points more McCain, up to 4.96% (and a tad more erose sadly; I hate when that happens). OH-06 picked up two 47% McCain precincts from OH-13 (tough to find, but for that area I have precinct data spreadsheets, with the McCain percentages in rank order, so that nothing is missed). The stats and map of the excising of Sutton from OH-16 are below.

One other comment about this stuff about shaving down the Dems to 3 CD's is so risky and all, mentioned by some. Yes, if trends go south for the GOP, and whatnot, it is possible that one of my 6% plus GOP PVI Columbus CD's might fall, but other than that, adding a 4th CD accomplishes nothing else really (to the extent it is even possible, which it isn't really (see below).  The balance of the CD's outside NE Ohio are safe anyway, and the modes of adjustment are narrow down there anyway, since Boehner lives in the far SE corner of his CD in Butler County, just across the Hamilton County line, and as for OH-06 and OH-16 they can't be made much more GOP anyway, even if you create another Dem CD in the NE.

That is because the Dem pack was/is so effective. Except for some critical link precincts, and a handful of say plus 2 to 5 PVI point Dem precincts at the edge of the Dem pack in a few places, what you have are oceans of marginal precincts and stuff along the lines of plus 3 to 6 GOP PVI precincts, with a few scattered more heavily GOP precincts, particularly around Canton, e.g., North Canton. Beyond the link precincts, and the trapped GOP zone in Lorain, the few odd 56% to 58% Obama precincts in Cuyahoga that are in OH-16 are largely "trapped" by solid GOP territory. OH-14 is trapped by the Dem pack CD's and that cannot change. So ceding some of that territory to a Dem is almost impossible, and at "best" you might create a somewhat marginal CD as against another CD that is maybe a 1.5 points higher for the GOP - max. Plus the map will get butt ugly. It just isn't happening - period.

What might happen, is that the Pubbies might leave a couple of points on the table, to make the Dem pack CD's look a tad less shall we say "aggressive." That is their choice if they wish - dumb, but I can't stop them. That is about the only thing in play. I say that because the Columbus chop is not in play either. That chop is going to happen. With 6 plus GOP chop CD's post absorbing their share of the Pubbie death zone,  the GOP just isn't going to send one of their team to the showers. The thought of that happening is almost ludicrous really.

You need to micro manage these maps, to really understand what you are doing. They are no shortcuts - there just aren't. Not in my experience.

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That may be a bit of a strong requirement. Back in 2002, would there have been any reason to call ID-01 or even NY-29 anything but safe Republican? And yet they both went Democratic in 2008.

Ok. I hold my assumption that they're going to aim for dropping 1D, 1R, where the R won't be Stivers because they like him too much, and they try to minimize Dem chances in Columbus. Perhaps it's a ludicrous assumption on my part. We'll have to see if anything other than a 13-3 map is passed by the legislature.

You are kind of a stubborn chap aren't you?  :) And I guess you don't believe Muon2's intelligence. In any event, I took your trend thing to heart a bit, and am excising from OH-06 Belmont and Monroe Counties, and am giving OH-06 a slug of Wayne County in return. OH-06 is also picking up the rest of marginal Carroll County, which is also being excised from OH-10. OH-10 is getting a slug of Wayne too, so Wayne becomes a tri-chop County, and it is dipping down again to pick up heavily GOP Gallia County.  OH-2 is going to be kicked out of Warren County, and OH-03 will take some more of it, and OH-01 will get a couple of towns in it, along with some GOP suburbs in west Hamilton County. OH-02 is going all the way to Lawrence County, and picking off some GOP but somewhat marginal territory south of Columbus.  Oh, and I have finished OH-05 which becomes a rather elongated adventure.

I hope to have a new map and stats up today with the changes, although OH-02 is not completed yet, and that will have to await another day. I have only done on a separate map a rough draft of the Cincinnati area. I think Boehner's contribution to the cause will be to pick up Clark County, and about 6 pretty heavily black precincts in Hamilton, right next to the town in which he resides in Butler, so he can revisit his rather impecunious youth, while staying in his CD as it were. :P  Uber GOP Mercer County and Van Wert counties are being saved for the quad-chop CD's along with uber GOP Ashland and less uber but still +12 GOP PVI Crawford, Knox and Wyandot Counties.  Isn't this fun?

It seems like we both are. :)


I believe it, but I also don't think it means that they're going to draw a 13-3 map. He said, IIRC, that they are looking to draw a Toledo-Cleveland district. Stipulated. They may do so--or it may be one person's idea--or they think it's a good starting point, and they'll try it, and see what comes out. And who is "they"? Legislative leadership? If so, can we assume that they have total control over the map and do decide what comes out, and that other Republicans won't be able to exercise some say? I doubt that it's going to be handed down from on high, but I don't know, but Muon2 didn't say it would be handed down from his source to the legislature as a whole for a vote. I too easily see a scenario where they ask their aides and mapmakers to try to draw a map with a Toledo-Cleveland district and a putative 13-3, and reject the result.

So I do believe he is telling us truthfully what he knows, but where you and I part ways is in the significance of his intelligence, and what's truly frustrating is that neither of us can assess right know who is right, me to be excessively skeptical, or you to see it is a sign of the outcome.

I am guessing you can do whatever you like with OH-2 and make it a Republican district anywhere in the state, that there will be no love lost for Jean Schmidt anywhere in the legislature.

Well to me this is a quite plausible map. As we both like to say - we shall see! Of course, I am going to push my little mappie.  :)  Anyway, this is the next chapter of the work in progress. Yes, I know, Latta is a bit thin in OH-05, but I am impressed with his numbers when running, and unlike the Ohio River zone, this area trended Dem in 2008.

We are halfway done now: 8 CD's done, and 8 to go.

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Oh, one kind of fun thing. As you know, I try to make the Pubbie CD's look as nice and pretty as possible, so thus you can see how I jiggled things to get to the right population for OH-05. The deus ex machina was picking up the last two precincts in Fostoria to put into OH-05, which happened to spill over from Seneca into Hancock County. It was just perfect! I had one little problem however. Hancock does not have precinct returns on the net. What to do? Well, what I did was pick up the phone and call the good folks at the Board of Elections in Hancock, and I asked a very nice lady if she would read me the Obama and McCain numbers for Fostoria North and Fostoria South, and she did, having however to go to the trouble of looking up the McCain numbers on one page, and the Obama numbers for the same precincts on another page. Several counties in Ohio organize their precinct data that way, and it is a pain in the butt. Yes, sad to say, Obama carried the two Forstoria precincts in Hancock by 57%.  :( One can't have everything, but for the cause of beautification, I just sic'ed Latta with the two precincts anyway. I am sure that he will understand. :)

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Torie, why do you assume Boehner would want to represent Clark County?  My guess is he's perfectly happy with his current seat.  The Johnson and Renacci districts, and to a much lesser degree those drawn for Ryan and Gibbs, seem unlikely (lack of community of interest, too much precision required, etc).  Also, bare in mind when making this map that the Ohio Republican party is currently heading towards 2006/Bob Taft level unpopularity (not just anger at Kasich, but the whole state party).  Additionally, it's looking like a referendum on SB5 will probably be on the ballot in 2012.  Also, don't assume politicians will automatically put their personal interests ahead of their party's, it happens all the time (example: white Democrats not wanting a safe seat to go to an African-American in AR may well result in an awful dummymander, which seems to be fine by local Democrats).  I am skeptical that a quad-chop map of Franklin county would get enough Republican support to pass.  Plus the map is so easy to attack from a public relations stand-point, just look at the Northeast, it doesn't even pretend (the way Michigan's current map does) to be anything other than the most grotesque of gerrymanders (this is probably the least important concern).  Just some things to keep in mind.

If you are going to not have a Dem seat in Columbus, the over Pubbied CD's need to take a haircut, and Boehner's currently clocks in with a GOP PVI of about 15 - yes fifteen.  That will need to be cut in half. I will try to keep him at an 8, but no promises (I do promise him at least a 7). Boehner has a national perspective, and I am sure will be a team player on this.

Boehner's home by the way is in an inconvenient place - very inconvenient - and if he were not who he is, the odds are the legislature would tell him to move, because Chabot needs all of Butler. But alas, given the situation, Chabot cannot have any more of Butler, or anything north of it, so his CD is going to expand to the only place it can - to the northeast, taking in the northeast corner of Hamilton, and the SW corner of Warren. Moreover, Schmidt in any event under-performs for a Pubbie in her share of Hamilton (the highest SES zone in the Cincinnati meto area by far except for her 15 or so black precincts which she will be keeping, because Chabot gets no traction with his black precincts either - blacks just don't vote for Pubbies - who knew?). Chabot will do much better with these high SES white folks that he will be picking up. Schmidt however runs just fine with the less cosmopolitan folks living along the Ohio River to the east, and I intend to give her a lot more of such people.  :)

That's not completely true.  While Schmidt does better against generic Democrats in the rural areas, the right kind of Democrat (pre-implosion Paul Hackett, for example) could certainly beat her in an Ohio river district (and keep the seat for the foreseeable future).  And since it looks like you're planning to draw Strickland's home into her district...

With regard to Boehner, I think that once Congressman get to a certain level of power, the instinct is often to oppose anything less than a hyper-safe district (as in their party PVI higher than 10).  I don't think Boehner will be as much of a team player as you do on this, b/c it doesn't currently seem like the Democrats would take back the house even with a fair map, let alone a Republican hyper-gerrymander.  So I suspect he'll want his district's GOP PVI to be more or less the same.  Basically, I agree with Britain33 (though I think the Republicans will screw up Franklin County no matter what they do).  I could see a less grotesque and much less effective/safe -2 Democratic seats map passing, however.    

Btw, Torie, as a fairly liberal Democrat I shudder at your maps, yet I can't help but have a huge admiration for the time, effort, thought, and attention to detail that you clearly put into them.

Also there are several Republicans I could see getting screwed (and Stivers is NOT one of them, state party really, really likes him, they see him as a rising star).  Bill Johnson doesn't really have any connections in the state party, he's new, he's not a strong Congressman anyway, and probably wouldn't be missed.  Bob Gibbs is probably somewhat better connected, but he's still a new back-bencher who will probably never be anything more than a back-bencher.  Renacci's new and has a reputation for being a pretty weak Congressman.  The Republicans in the legislature hate Schmidt almost as much as the Democrats do (she was sort of like our version of pre-Congress Bill Sali for a while). 

With regard to Clark County, while this wouldn't ALWAYS be a safe Republican district, if you connected Clark and Montgomery counties, it would be a safe (even against a strong candidate in an anti-GOP wave year) for as long Mike Turner stayed in Congress.  He's pretty popular in Dayton, always has been.  He's the type of GOP Congressman who is strong enough to take in swing/Democratic territory.  Also, I still have doubts that a quad-chop map of Franklin county could get passed (not that I don't see way you want that).  That way you free up a bunch of wasted Republican suburban votes (Turner never really needed the help, the suburbs were added more to convince him to run than anything else).

Also, I think they'll focus on making Boehner, Stivers, Tiberi, Jordan, Chabot, and Austria happy first and foremost, even at the expense of Schmidt, Gibbs, Johnson, and Renacci.

Ditto.

Thanks guys for the generous words. I appreciate it.

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!

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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! :)

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Very impressive. You've definitely put a huge amount of effort into this.

Which just means that any map that all the R's intended as winning are actually happy with and safe (barring events) under, is an 11-5 map (or rather 10-5-1 taking account of Chabot's. 9-5-2 after Turner retires, should that happen during the decade. Unless Torie pubbied those up. Oh yeah, 8-5-3 if LaTourette retires, though I see no reason why he should.). Which, however, is exceedingly unlikely to actually happen - as that would mean Republicans abolishing two Republican districts.

Note, "can".

True, you do have to gamble somewhere with a 12-4 map. That means leaving Johnson's district intact and hoping he can hold it; although the removal of Athens would help.

You're correct about Latuorette, but not so much about Chabot and Turner. Both of them can be put into a district that has at least a Republican tilt simply by spreading out Mean Jean's GOP strength a bit, and Boehner chipping in a point or two here and there. On my map in post 154 I put them in 51/53% McCain districts; it could be 53/53 if Mr. Boehner would consent to grabbing some Hamilton County blacks.

The good thing about Ohio is that they have a couple heavy hitters in Congress; I expect Boehner's team to be actually dictating the maps, just as Cantor's team did in Virginia and Hastert's team in Illinois 10 years ago. So, they won't have to worry about much about 'local' concerns about undesirable maps, unlike, say, Arkansas and Louisiana, the latter of which is obviously struggling with intraparty bickering. But if Louisiana had a committee chairman somewhere, there would be an obvious need to protect his district, and the rest of the map would fall into place.

The good thing is that Sutton and Kucinich have essentially no cross-party appeal. Sutton, for example, always loses that strip of territory in southern Cuyahoga County, even in 2006.

Mercer County (and Putnam County) was settled by German Catholic immigrants, so it is very Catholic (like 70% or so) not Mennonite. You might not think of Catholics as a Republican group but German Catholics in rural parts of NW Ohio vote pretty much the same as the Mennonites.

Hastert didn't dictate the map in IL, that was a prime example of how politicians sometimes put their interests ahead of their party's interests.  Chicago Democrats were fine with a Republican incumbent protection plan that took away one non-Chicago Democratic seat because things were less polarized which meant that they gained some influence from having Hastert as Speaker.  Also, I doubt Cantor dictated the Virginia map, as he wasn't a top member of the House Republican leadership yet.  Remember, in PA they didn't go with the map national Republicans originally wanted, that could certainly happen here. 

I also suspect Schmidt would've lost to Hackett in the district Torie's drawn for her.

I didn't mean the 2000 Virginia map.

Cantor, Goodlatte, and Connolly pretty much wrote the upcoming Virginia map, not the 2000 one. At least that's what reports are saying.

As far as 2000 Illinois is concerned, you're right about the reason Chicago Democrats did it, but as I understand it Hastert was heavily involved in the actual lines. The 8th district for instance was designed to protect Phil Crane although he lost it anyway, even while W was winning there easily.

I remember it as the 8th shedding some safe Republican areas to the 10th to shore up Mark Kirk, but it backfired because Crane was such a weak incumbent.

Hastert's staff did draw the 2000 map for IL in consultation with Cong. Dan Lipinski. The Dems got the map they wanted in Cook and protected Cong. Evans in IL-17, but conceded the rest of the state. The legislature didn't necessarily like it, but the Speakership matters a lot. It will be interesting to see what role it plays in OH this year.

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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. :P 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.

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Keep in mind that Tiberi, Stivers, and to a lesser degree Austria will probably want a suburban GOP district, not one that takes in large swaths of rural territory. 

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.

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I think you're wasting a lot of Republicans shoring up Turner, he'll be around for a while (probably until the next redistricting).  Schmidt may have problems in the district you're drawing, though I'll comment more about that when I see the final form of the district.  I still think Renacci and Johnson's districts go through more trouble to protect those two than most Ohio Republicans are willing to do (especially the Cleveland portion of Renacci's district).  I could see Stivers expanding north, but I'm not sure he'll want to (he might be vulnerable to a primary challenge if he gets to heavily Republican a district).  Tiberi will probably want a suburban district, but that's easier, I suspect.  Also, Austria has solid connections in the legislature, and will probably get whatever district he wants, even if it costs several Republican points (something that I'm sure you know could be a major problem for Republicans representing part of Franklin County).  Also, I wonder (though I'd need to see the Republican PVI) if Gibbs might now be vulnerable, since Charlie Wilson said he'd run if he got a district he thought was winnable.  Gibbs is on the weaker end of generic R, hardly a top-tier candidate.  Wilson is, as I understand it, a very good fit for the Ohio River/Appalachia counties and the district includes all of Athens and Belmont (Wilson's home base, I think) counties.  However, Chabot seems to be protected as best as can realistically be done and LaTourette should be fine until he leaves office/next redistricting.

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!  :P

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! :P  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?

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I'm planning to put up my own map over the summer (I would do this sooner, but college work comes first!).  I actually think that Republicans would be better off if Schmidt lost (I view it as sort of like CO-4, now Republicans won't have to spend money on that seat in the foreseeable future), but that's beside the point.  While I agree with you that the only sensible purpose of a GOP-gerrymander is to move public policy in a Republican direction, I think another purpose (albeit a less sensible one) will inevitably be to accommodate certain Republicans, even at the expense of the first goal (that's just the way things work, as I'm sure you know). I do think Republicans would be better off with Wilson in Johnson's CD, as Wilson would have no cross-over appeal in the Stark county part of the district, whereas he would in many parts of Gibb's district.  However, I certainly hope you don't think I am only criticizing, without an alternative, I just don't have time at the moment to put together a whole map (though I intend to over the summer).  Don't get me wrong, this map is a work of art, and it is more or less the best way to do a 13-3 map, but I don't think that is the only factor to take into account when making maps, even gerrymanders.  

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. :P

Fair enough :)  To answer your question, if I had to guess how much time was spent on this, I would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 weeks (off the top of my head guess) at the least.  However, I do agree that it can screw up a great map when incumbents aren't willing to "take one for the team."

It's important to keep in mind what type of Democrat might win one of the 13 R districts when we are discussing this type of thing. When the House was debating the healthcare bill and Ohio had 10 Democratic and 8 Republican congressmen, 5 (6 if you count Kucinich) of those 10 gave the Democratic Leadership quite a headache holding out until the 11th hour. Driehaus, Boccieri, Wilson, Space, and Kaptur refused to say how they would vote until the very end. Kaptur even waited until an hour before the vote. All of them ended up voting for it but they certainly did major damage to the Democrats by making a scene. Other than Kaptur, the rest of these names give you a good picture of the type of Democrat who would win most of the 13 "R" districts if things went horribly wrong for the Republicans.

Also notice the absence of the other Democrat who lost reelection, Mary Jo Kilroy of Columbus. When the map is drawn it is more important to keep the Democrats out of Columbus than Cincinnati or SE Ohio or the Canton/Medina area because in all likelihood a Democratic rep from Columbus will be a straight-down-the-line liberal. I'd certainly like to see a 13-3 map hold, but if Charlie Wilson or some other Appalachan Democrat takes out Johnson or Gibbs it would still be better for the Republicans than a Democrat in Columbus.

A couple months ago, I had tried to draw an Ohio map to preserve all incumbent Republicans (though I lacked precinct data for everything other than Cuyahoga County so it was a rough guess at best) and wound up with something rather similar to what Torie is doing. Obviously I did a few things different, like I put Athens County in Schmidt’s district and I certainly did not take as much care around Cleveland to make OH 16 a true Republican district rather than a slightly lean R. But when it comes down to it, I think some close variation to what Torie is drawing is the best possible map for the Ohio Republican Party.

Look at it district by district:
Cincinnati Area:
1. Chabot- all you can do is switch which parts of Hamilton County you take in since Schmidt and Boehner block you from going east or northeast. You don’t want to go straight north either because the next town you cross in Butler County is the college town of Oxford. I don’t have precinct data, but I doubt that would help Chabot.

2. Schmidt- you need to swallow up as many Democratic areas as you can with this district to make the rest of the state easier. You can’t really go west or north so you have to go east. Like I said before, I drew Athens into this district but the way Torie drew it is fine. You give Schmidt a normally safe district and if she can’t hold it that’s her problem. I can’t imagine what sort of Democrat could hold this seat for more than one term anyways.

3. Turner- his district stays pretty much the same and he will be set until he wants to retire. As long as you draw something reasonable (no Columbus to Springfield to Dayton to Cincinnati mess) the Republicans should still win an open seat.

8. Boehner- try to keep this the most heavily Republican district in the state but yet a little less excessively so than it is now. Giving him Clark County and keeping most of it the same is a good idea. I originally gave him more of Dayton but that really doesn’t help since Columbus is where we want the extra Republican support. Clark is much better.

Cleveland:
11. Fudge- pack district, run it to Akron, take as many Dems as possible

10. Kucinich- eliminate his district by running Renacci up from Medina County. A lot of people don’t like this but I don’t really see any other way to make a 13-3 map. I guess you could run Gibbs or Latta in instead but that would just make it unnecessarily ugly.

13. Sutton- eliminate her too for the same reasons as Kucinich though her district is easier to get rid of. Lorain goes to Kaptur and the Democratic part of Akron is split into Fudge and Ryan

14. LaTourette- try not to change it too much since LaTourette is popular and completely surrounded by overwhelmingly Democratic areas. Other than tinkering around with specific precincts there isn’t much to do here.

17. Ryan- I put just Akron and Youngstown here but adding in Canton and Alliance is even better. The way Torie drew it, Ryan, Sutton, and Boccieri can all have a fun 3-way primary. Maybe former rep Jim Traficant can join in now that he’s out of prison (if he ever wants to be a Democrat again). It seems like every other idea I see on here does something weird like throw in Ashtabula County or some random swath of rural land. Why would the Republicans do that? My only concern with Torie’s map is that the lines may be too erose looking. If that’s the case, Canton may have to go and if it does, better some coin-flip Appalachian Dem than a liberal city Dem.

16. Renacci- run this up all the way to the west side of Cleveland and be careful exactly who you put in it. When I first drew this I was much less ambitious than Torie and without the 9th district coming in, made it about 52-53% Obama without a whole lot of crazy-looking lines. But this really is the key part of a 13-3 map and by far the most sensitive to draw as it requires a Republican to represent a large chunk of Cuyahoga County and even part of the city of Cleveland. It’s a tall order but there really is no other way to protect all the Republican incumbents. If you would give up that idea, you could do just about anything with this district.

Southeast:
6. Johnson- it’s a shame he lives so close to Youngstown. When I tried this, I gave him all the southeast instead of Stark County (with I gave to Gibbs) but whyat Torie drew is probably better because Johnson is harder to protect than Gibbs because Gibbs’s home is in the middle of some very, very Republican areas.

18. Gibbs- I originally gave him most of Renacci’s current district (including Stark County) but the interior Southeast will work as well. I gave Athens to Schmidt so giving it to Gibbs is a little different. Otherwise, all you can really do is try to make Gibbs and Johnson about equally safe and hope for the best.

Toledo:
9. Kaptur- shave down Toledo as much as possible so she can take as much of Lorain/Elyria/Cleveland? as possible. I originally thought the Republicans would check the gerrymander at the Lorain/Cuyahoga County line but clearly going to Cleveland is a better plan.

5. Latta- this takes all the land leftover from everywhere else and should be fairly safe unless you do something crazy like give him inner-city Toledo or Lorain or Columbus.

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.

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."

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Spoken like a true RINO.
You see, this is exactly why it's dubious that Republican operatives would go with your maps - they don't agree with that premise. At all.

I take that back. You're not a rhinoceros. You are a gorgeous octopus.
Doesn't change the rest of the statement, though. :)

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

Your OH-4 is a model for a mathematical redistricting paper I read recently. The statistical analysis concluded that it was best to pair extremes from both parties with a slight edge to the mapper's side to have the most effective gerrymander. Nominally that should be more successful than pairing and extreme R area with a moderate D area or vice versa.

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! :(

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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.

Why don't you run Jordan into Columbus via Madison Cty rather than Union? This gives Stivers more access to the counties to the north; he and Tiberi can take the current eastern parts of OH-04, and Jordan has easier access to the south side of Franklin Cty. 

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.

God must stop being a Republican at the Columbus city limits. ;)

http://tiberi.house.gov/Biography/ says that he lives in Genoa Township, which is in southern Delaware Cty.

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.

It's nothing personal. Most maps get no comments at all, especially the ones that are inoffensive.

Make them prettier, and I will look at them. The dull tones of the maps I see (other than mine
of course :P), 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?  :)

Someone at SSP submitted this 12-4-hope-Stivers-still-overperforms map, it's what I expect to see.

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

I can't believe you're complaining about a very clean-looking 12-4 (notionally 11-5) map in a state with only a mild Republican bias. :P

No, I think that's just silly thinking from silly leftists.

Why on earth would they unsplit Lucas county when its already split, and really needs to be split further given how many pubbies are there West of Toledo? Especially while putting Oberlin in a GOP district...

Masochism, though, is your 4 way split of Columbus, Torie. :)

Eh, I'm not so detail-focused on things like that. It's the rough shape of the districts that matters.

Well, its those details that make him create what I believe we have easily proven to be a completely unnecessary 4th district in Northern Ohio. He's drowning hundreds of thousands of Republican leaning areas in the Democratic districts.

He's splitting other counties anyway, compared to what I did (Medina for instance).

Suffice to say, there is still plenty of disagreement on this board about whether Ohio will be taking the map-drawing to the extent Torie has to accomplish his goals, and we aren't going to bridge that gap until the maps come out. That 4th district is "necessary" if you think Republicans will balk at the effort necessary to pack Dems into 3 districts and the consequent erosity of the map. (But seriously, I don't know.) 

I see the following Dem districts:

Toledo-Lorain
Cuyahoga
Cuyahoga-Akron
Akron-Youngstown

and a Columbus split. The 6th district made somewhat safer.

How the map-drawers do this specifically, or what county ends up in which Republican backbencher's district, is not important to me.

I mean, I'm really not trying to bait Torie or rehash debates that have run their course, but I think we can discuss alternative maps.

Oh no, irreconciliable differences. :P

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.

Hopefully, they just pack his district with Columbus Democrats.

I strongly believe that at least one Dem pack is needed in central or southern Ohio.  If you don't put it there, it could end up being a dummy mander.  Krazen has been on top of this for quite a while, but part of the reason we lost the house in 2006 is because we were too aggressive in the last round of redistricting.  Let us be more conservative and lock in our gains.  Does it matter if have a 35 seat majority vs a 50 seat majority?  I'd want to lock in our gains, and we have the opportunity do that here. 

Well, I don't think he'd beat Brown (although it would be close), I could easily see the seat flipping (or not, a lot depends on the candidates and to a somewhat lesser degree the district).  Paula Brooks would be a really strong Democratic candidate (she would have definitely won in 2006, and probably won or lost by a razor-thin margin in 2008).  In an open-seat race, baring in mind that the Republican nominee is by no means guaranteed to be as strong as Tiberi, I could see Brooks winning an open-seat.  I don't know which Columbus district Cordray will end up living in, but if he decides to run for Congress (although, this is somewhat unlikely, as he is widely believed to be planning on challenging Kasich in 2014, and would probably win).  However, were he to change his mind or decide to try to also pick up a House seat for the Democrats, he'd win (He won Franklin County by about 20% in 2010).  Another possible candidate is State Representative Nancy Garland who won reelection in 2010 in a district that was one of the top Republican targets that year (there's not really a way around including her most (if not all) of her district in the portion of Franklin County that goes to Tiberi's district.  I'm sure there are other potential Democratic candidates, but with the lines undetermined its hard to say (and the Republicans also have a bench in this area).  Basically, an open seat here could certainly be a Democratic pickup, but it's not a sure thing.          

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.

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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! :P  A more invisible Pubbie would do better.

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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?

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

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.

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.

Very welcome. I'm working on a map as we speak that's 12-4 GOP adding a Columbus district. Nowhere near as difficult as a 13-3 map, of course, but I'm trying to make all GOP districts incredibly solid, so even a Dem version of 2010 or 1994 couldn't flip them...

The theory is that if there is a pool of hard D votes, there's nothing that can be done to win them in any year. Likewise a pool of hard R would never be lost, so the best district for a hard R candidate would have 51% hard R and 49% hard D with no independent or swing voters.

The swing voters should be reserved for districts that will attract candidates with a moderate appeal, and that would be where the hard core elements of the party can't win in the primary. Ideally it's a district with lots of swingy voters, but with a clear R PVI if the GOP is drawing the map.

This is just one theory, but it make some sense from a statistical perspective. It requires thinking about one's partisans as to the strength of their convictions. That's harder to discern from simple precinct results, but comparing strong elections for opposite parties (eg 2006 vs 2010) can provide a good sense of the amount of swing in a precinct.

In the 2006 Senate race (Athens is split into two Congressional Districts on the current map so the Senate is easier to look at), Sherrod Brown (D) won Athens County 70%-30% and won Ohio 56%-44%, so 14 points more Democratic than the entire state.

In the 2010 Senate race, Lee Fisher (D) carried Athens County 59%-35% (not sure who the other 6% voted for) but went on to lose the state 57-39% to Rob Portman, so 20 points more Democratic than the entire state (and 22 points less Republican).

As far as I can tell the only way time the Repubicans kept Athens reasonably close was in the 2000 presidential election when Gore only won 52-38% because 7% voted for Ralph Nader.

Though this is probably a moot point because the 10th district as Torie drew is probably Republican enough to safely re-elect Bob Gibbs anyways. And I have a hard time seeing the Dems having a major resurgence in that part of the state (think West Virginia) anytime soon barring some kind of scandal.

Doesn't this analysis kind of ignore turnout, though? For example, your "ideal" district of 51% hard R's vs. 49% hard D's would swing as soon as the Democrats had a turnout increase relative to the Republicans.

Of course there are many other factor that one needs to account for, including turnout. However, I thought the theory provided an interesting insight into districts that is not often covered. I would say that turnout is more likely to be a problem with swing voters. The hard D's and R's are usually the most likely to vote - that's part of how they get identified as such.

With all due respect, the legislature is probably not going screw over Stivers in a primary like that, Republicans are not going to focus on aggressive, partisan efficiency in the single-minded way your map does.  They'll take it into account, but it won't over-ride everything else by default.

I'm reassured by the way the Columbus quad-chop looks, because I agree, I do not see that 4th district being passed out of the legislature.

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.

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?  :P  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. :)

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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.

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

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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. :P

As I've said, the map is undeniably brilliant, a work of art even.  I just predict that Republicans will try to keep Austria, Tiberi, Jordan, and Stivers extremely happy (even at the expense of Johnson, Renacci, Schmidt, and to a lesser degree Gibbs).  This will, imo, lead them to produce a dummymander (especially with regard to the Franklin County tri-chop I'm expecting).  Lastly, yes, I guess I am simultaneously awe-inspired and horrified by your 12th (which under both this and the current map happens to be my native district) :o :)

Hooray! This is amazing and exactly what I hope the Ohio Republicans do. Every incumbent Republican is safe.

My only concerns are that it might look too gerrymandered in the 9th district's snake into Cleveland and the Canton/Alliance leg of the Youngstown district. But since when has appearance really mattered? It's even pretty good from a communities of interest standpoint in case people care about that (at least in NE OH, Columbus not so much but it already is that way so it's nothing new).

But all in all, this is beautiful, absolutely beautiful! :)

Here is a more complete stat matrix chart, which includes comparisons with the prior CD's and the partisan trends. Obviously, the new CD's take in new territory, so the comparisons just give one a rough idea of who is doing what to whom, when. This particular Gerrymander moved a mere 35 points from the "wrong places" to the "right places."  Not bad!  :)

It is interesting that NW Ohio trended heavily to the Dems in 2008, which the rest of the state either trended to the GOP, or had no trend. Next door Indiana trended evenly more heavily to the Dems. It would be interesting to speculate why the partisan trend went one way on one side of the imaginary line taking in NW Ohio and Indiana, and parts of Illinois and so forth, and the other way on its other side.

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I think there are a few Al posts on this subject, if not a few Sam Spade ones too.

Splendid. What was Mr. Spade's opinion?  He's kind of an arrogant type, with an obscurantist streak, probably for tactical reasons, and thus no doubt well suited to be a lawyer, but sometimes his opinions amazing enough have some value. Yes, I know, Indiana is next door to Illinois' second most illustrious son in the view of some (I am not sure anyone puts Mr. Obama ahead of Lincoln yet, but give it time), but why would Obama love expand into NW Ohio, but nowhere else in Ohio (and outside Toledo in a zone that is heavily German to boot)?   I mean, it is not like it's in the same media market with any of the balance of the "love zone." In fact, Toledo, amazingly enough, has its own TV stations. Are those stations packed with talking heads who are at once Commies and persuasive or something? If so, I would like to meet this particular cohort of "reds!"  :)

By the way, I wonder what Mr. Spade thinks of my Ohio mappie. I take a special pleasure in how I just ignored my host of critics and skeptics, and just did it!  And I am particularly proud of my nice little geometrical shapes and color scheme.  I wonder if Mr. Spade appreciates the symmetry of the color scheme, the balance, the clarity, and the harmony of it all.  If he doesn't, he's a Philistine. :P

My guess as to why NW Ohio swung so heavily toward Obama is that I recall the unemployment rate increasing much, much more in that part of the state when the economy crashed in 2008. The NW corner of the state has a lot of industrial towns (think Elkhart, Indiana) and I remember the unemployment rate being over 15% in a lot of areas. While there are other areas of the state more impoverished, the NW was better to begin with and the economic decline was more noticeable.

Though I am a college student in Cleveland, I am orginally from NW Ohio (Erie County actually). I'd describe most of the people there as economically liberal and socially conservative. As long as things are going well, they will vote based on social issues but when hit in the pocketbook, especially when the Republicans were in charge, fiscal concerns take over and they vote for the Democrats. I think a lot of people were (and still are) struggling to make ends meet and when Obama promised change they wanted to give him a chance. Now the question is whether or not they will think he deserves a second chance.

That sounds like a most excellent analysis to me. I guess the codicil is that they are also less racist in NW Ohio than in the butternut belt (and yes fossil fuel free) so are a bit more willing to vote their pocket book as they see it (I suspect many regret their votes now). And thanks for the words about my map. It demonstrates that we have at least two aesthetes on this forum, and it is great to not be so entirely alone in that department. :)

Torie, why do you bother with land contiguity for the 9th District? Why not just use Lake Erie water contiguity to collect Toledo, Cleveland, and any precincts you want to pick up in between?

If you did that, the connection between the two parts of the 16th District would not look so bad. In addition, you probably could also add a few "pubbie points," as you so amusingly call them, by removing any less Democratic connecting precincts that you are currently including in the 9th along the shore of Lake Erie.

Water counts the same as land eh? OH-09 would just be like a series of ports along the lake, sort of like Kalingrad is to Russia. Yes, that might add about 1 pubbie point. Not too much is lost hooking up OH-09 East to OH-09 West via terra firma.

Exactly. Unless there is a state law provision against using water contiguity, you can use it (at least no court that I know of has said that you can't). People might complain about using water contiguity just for partisan gerrymandering, but it doesn't look any worse than the way you currently have the 16th District.

I suspect there may be case law on that matter. The GOP had control in 2001 and didn't hop across Erie except to islands or over bridges.

With partisan data, here's another stab at a 12-4 Republican map:

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OH-01 (blue) - 51.3 Obama, 47.5 McCain. (Was 55-44 Obama)
OH-02 (green) - 56.7 McCain, 41.8 Obama. (Was 59-40 McCain)
OH-03 (purple) - 52.4 McCain, 46.2 Obama. (Was 51-47 McCain)
OH-04 (red) - 57.0 McCain, 41.0 Obama. (Was 60-38 McCain)
OH-05 (yellow) - 51.7 McCain, 46.6 Obama. (Was 53-45 McCain)
OH-06 (teal) - 51.1 McCain, 46.5 Obama. (OH-06 was 50-48 McCain, OH-18 was 52-46 McCain)
OH-07 (grey) - 49.4 Obama, 49.1 McCain. (Was 54-45 McCain)
OH-08 (light purple) - 61.6 McCain, 36.8 Obama. (Was 60-38 McCain)
OH-09 (sky blue) - 65.2 Obama, 33.1 McCain. (Was 62-36 Obama)
OH-10 (magenta) - 58.9 Obama, 39.6 McCain. (OH-10 was 59-39 Obama, OH-11 was 57-42 Obama)
OH-11 (light green Cleveland-Akron) - 83.2 Obama, 16.1 McCain, 51.4% black VAP. (Was 85-15 Obama)
OH-12 (light purple Columbus) - 50.5 Obama, 48.1 McCain. (Was 53-46 Obama)
OH-13 (pink) - 59.4 Obama, 38.4 McCain. (OH-17 was 62-36 Obama)
OH-14 (brown) - 49.2 Obama, 49.2 McCain (Obama by 16 votes!). (Was 49-49 McCain)
OH-15 (orange) - 50.7 Obama, 47.6 McCain. (Was 54-45 Obama)
OH-16 (light green) - 52.4 McCain, 45.9 Obama. (Was 50-48 McCain)

Sutton and Kucinich are drawn into the same district, as are Johnson and Ryan.

For the heck of it, here's a Democratic gerrymander:

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OH-01 (blue) - 59.2 Obama, 39.8 McCain (Was 55-44 Obama)
OH-02 (green) - 61.5 McCain, 36.7 Obama (Was 59-40 McCain)
OH-03 (purple) - 54.3 Obama, 44.1 McCain (Was 51-47 McCain)
OH-04 (red) - 63.0 McCain, 35.1 Obama (Was 60-38 McCain)
OH-05 (yellow) - 52.0 McCain, 46.2 Obama (Was 53-45 McCain)
OH-06 (teal) - 50.3 Obama, 47.4 McCain (Was 50-48 McCain)
OH-07 (grey) - 60.7 McCain, 37.3 Obama (Was 54-45 McCain)
OH-08 (light purple) - 67.1 McCain, 31.8 Obama (Was 60-38 McCain)
OH-09 (sky blue) - 59.8 Obama, 38.5 McCain (Was 62-36 Obama)
OH-10 (light green Cuyahoga/Lorain) - 57.6 Obama, 41.0 McCain (Was 59-39 Obama)
OH-11 (magenta) - 83.5 Obama, 15.7 McCain, 50.9% black VAP (Was 85-14 Obama)
OH-12 (light purple Columbus) - 52.5 Obama, 45.8 McCain (Was 53-46 Obama)
OH-13 (pink) - 57.7 Obama, 40.7 McCain (Was 57-42 Obama)
OH-14 (brown) - 58.5 Obama, 39.5 McCain (OH-14 was 49-49 McCain, OH-17 was 62-36 Obama)
OH-15 (orange) - 61.1 Obama, 37.5 McCain (Was 54-45 Obama)
OH-16 (light green) - 56.2 McCain, 41.7 Obama (Was 50-48 McCain)

I would expect OH-01, 09, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15 to be safe Dem, OH-06 and 12 to be swing districts, and OH-02, 04, 05, 07, 08, and 16 to be safe Republican. So, 8-6-2. Maybe 8-5-3 if you think OH-05 would be a swing district.

Surely OH-09 can be unpacked a bit to improve Democratic chances in OH-05.

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OH-05: 49.6% Obama, 48.7% McCain
OH-09: 55.4% Obama, 42.9% McCain

I don't think it would be worth making OH-09 vulnerable in exchange for maybe winning OH-05.

OH-5 is one of those places where Obama overperformed and a generic Democrat would do worse. The opposite of OH-6, in fact.

We worked this little issue to death didn't we, my friend? LOL. Pity I have not had time to push my little mappie. I have been absorbed with agriculture of late - very absorbed. And I have learned so much!  And therein lies a tale. :)

don't waste your time trying to pick up the 5th district. Its been held by a republican since the end of the great depression. Instead, why not try making it even more republican. My proposed 5th district is a 58.8% McCain district.

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I decided to draw my own 13-3 map of Ohio. I kept Kaptur out of Cuyahoga County because drawing her in might be too much. Renacci’s district can probably be cleaned up a little more on its western side without changing much. The eastern edge is a battle between going off of presidential results and going off of what would hurt Kucinich more because that area on the far west edge of Cleveland has about 8 or 9 precincts under 60% Obama but is also the neighborhood Kucinich grew up in. Lakewood is a wealthier Democratic area that supported Obama with closer to 70% but Kucinich did very poor.

The Ohio Republicans really need a solid candidate from SE Ohio because one of the main questions when drawing this is what to do with that part of the state so you don’t have any Dayton-to-Youngstown (or similar) messes. I thought the best thing to do was to give as much of that territory as possible to Jean Schmidt and completely take her out of Hamilton County. As a result, Boehner comes in for a share of the Cincy crack and he’s only at R+10. I hope that’s safe enough because doing this cleans up a lot of other stuff.

1.   Dark Green (Chabot R-Cincinnati): McCain 51.7- Obama 47.2 R+6
2.   Gold (Schmidt R-Loveland): McCain 53.8- Obama 44.0 R+9
3.   Slate Green (Turner R-Dayton): McCain 50.1- Obama 48.4 R+4
4.   Purple (Jordan R-Urbana): McCain 53.1-Obama 45.1 R+8
5.   Red (Latta R-Bowling Green): McCain 52.1-Obama 45.9 R+7
6.   Dark Teal (Johnson R-Poland, also Sutton D-Copley): McCain 50.6-Obama 47.6 R+5
7.   Gray (Austria R-Beavercreek): McCain 51.4-Obama 47.1 R+6
8.   Cornflower Blue (Boehner R-West Chester): McCain 55.8-Obama 43.0 R+10
9.   Cyan (Kaptur D-Toledo): Obama 64.5-McCain 33.9 D+12 
10.   Lime Green (Renacci R-Wadsworth, also Kucinich D-Cleveland): Obama 50.1-McCain 48.6 R+3
11.   Yellow (Fudge D-Warrensville Heights): Obama 85.1-McCain 14.1 D+32
12.   Brown (Tiberi R-Galena): McCain 50.0-Obama 48.5 R+4
13.   Black (Gibbs R-Lakeland): McCain 52.6-Obama 45.0 R+7
14.   Tan (LaTourette R-Bainbridge Township): Obama 49.5-McCain 49.0 R+3
15.   Orange (Stivers R-Columbus): McCain 51.3-Obama 47.1 R+6
16.   Navy Blue (Ryan D-Niles): Obama 65.4-McCain 32.4 D+13

I am also considering trying to draw one that packs Columbus and cracks Toledo.

Hmm...that might actually make more sense than cracking Columbus if you look at the trends. I just don't know whether there is enough population there. You would probably need to crack a bunch of democratic cities along the lake as well as parts of Cuyahoga I am guessing. But since the district needs to last ten years, it might be the safer option.

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Here’s my Toledo crack. It came out pretty nice with the exception of Steve Austria’s district which looks awful. It’s hard to cover the NW with a district less considering you need at least two of the four-way Columbus split and none are really near Toledo. By packing Columbus, Tiberi can now crack Canton and make Johnson safer. I am a little concerned about Gibbs too since I had to use him for the cracking of Lorain County. I decided to take the liberty of connecting the Columbus pack to Springfield, Yellow Springs, and Urbana even though Austria should be safe without it. I have to give him something for dealing with this mess. :)

1.   Dark Green (Chabot R-Cincinnati): McCain 51.7- Obama 47.2 R+6
2.   Gold (Schmidt R-Loveland): McCain 53.7- Obama 44.1 R+8
3.   Slate Green (Turner R-Dayton): McCain 50.1- Obama 48.4 R+4
4.   Purple (Jordan R-Urbana, also Kaptur D-Toledo (maybe in District 5)): McCain 52.7-Obama 45.5 R+7
5.   Red (Latta R-Bowling Green): McCain 50.2-Obama 48.0  R+5
6.   Dark Teal (Johnson R-Poland): McCain 51.1-Obama 46.9  R+6
7.   Gray (Austria R-Beavercreek): McCain 55.4-Obama 42.8 R+10
8.   Cornflower Blue (Boehner R-West Chester): McCain 55.8-Obama 43.0 R+10
9.   Cyan (Open D): Obama 71.1-McCain 27.3 D+18 
10.   Lime Green (Renacci R-Wadsworth, also Kucinich D-Cleveland): Obama 50.1-McCain 48.6 R+3
11.   Yellow (Fudge D-Warrensville Heights): Obama 85.1-McCain 14.1 D+32
12.   Brown (Tiberi R-Galena): McCain 51.6-Obama 46.4  R+6
13.   Black (Gibbs R-Lakeland): McCain 49.6-Obama 48.4  R+4
14.   Tan (LaTourette R-Bainbridge Township): Obama 49.5-McCain 49.0 R+3
15.   Orange (Stivers R-Columbus): McCain 55.0-Obama 45.0 R+9
16.   Navy Blue (Ryan D-Niles, also Sutton D-Copley): Obama 63.9-McCain 34.2 D+11

Given the maps I've seen so far I think the Republicans would be foolish to try a 13-3 map.  Its too risky IMO.  I think they could be fairly safe with a 12-4 map that eliminates Kucinich and I think they could build 11 completely safe seats if they did a Columbus Dem pack.

I decided to try and make a ‘safe’ 11-1-4 map, eliminating Jean Schmidt and forcing Stivers to run for the Senate to pack Columbus. I was originally trying for 11-5, but you’d pretty much have to gerrymander it in Kucinich’s favor to keep him and making his seat more Democratic really doesn’t help any of the Republicans. All it would really do is make Fudge’s seat D+30 instead of D+32. I also really tried to draw neat lines and keep counties whole (except the VRA district because you can’t). I think this map is much less gerrymandered than the current one and drawn less for incumbents.

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1.   Dark Green (Steve Chabot R-Cincinnati): McCain 50.7- Obama 48.2 R+5

Jean Schmidt (R-Loveland) also lives here but I can’t imagine her winning a primary. Chabot should be safe here for the next decade since he loses a third or so of the black parts of Cincinnati to Boehner. The PVI is a little understated here because Obama did better than normal for a Democrat in Cincinnati.

2.   Gold (Open D-Columbus):  Obama 69.3-McCain 29.1 D+17

Here’s the Columbus pack instead of Schmidt’s old district. Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) probably lives here but he can never win this district. He’ll either need to challenge Jim Jordan in OH-4 or Pat Tiberi in OH-15 or run for the Senate. Mary Jo Kilroy would have a good chance of taking back this seat.

3.   Brown (Mike Turner R-Dayton): McCain 51.7- Obama 46.8 R+6

Mike Turner would be very safe here and it makes the whole southwest corner of the state fit pretty neatly along county lines. The PVI is a little low but Turner will do better with inner-city Dayton than any other Republican. This should be Likely R even if Turner retires.
 
4.   Electric Blue (Jim Jordan R-Urbana): McCain 58.1- Obama 40.1 R+13

Stivers may try to run here instead of running for Senate, though Jordan has been listed as a possible Senate candidate so perhaps this might persuade him. Unfortunately, this seat covers a lot of new territory but it isn’t hideous looking like OH-4 on most of these maps. It should be Safe R barring a major scandal.

5.   Red (Bob Latta R-Bowling Green): McCain 58.6- Obama 39.6 R+13

Latta would like this district a lot and it makes him even safer than he already is.

6.   Dark Teal (Bill Johnson R-Poland): McCain 50.9- Obama 46.9 R+6

This is one of the hardest districts to make safe because there just aren’t any dependably Republican areas around. It’s safer than the current district at least.

7.   Gray (Steve Austria R-Beavercreek): McCain 54.8- Obama 43.2 R+9

Austria would have to cover a lot of new territory but someone has to take the far southern part of the state and it should be a pretty safe district for him still. The western section of the Ohio river is much more dependably Republican than the eastern section. He also gets all of Athens except Coolville (which is the Republican part) to help Johnson.

8.   Cornflower Blue (John Boehner R-West Chester): 55.4- Obama 43.4 R+10

This is one of the potential problems with this map for the Republicans because Boehner may demand a safer district or to keep more of his old territory, although this is centered more around his home and the areas he grew up in. The main purpose here is to help secure Chabot without jeopardizing Boehner. This is also much more compact than the old district and stays in one metropolitan area.

9.   Cyan (Marcy Kaptur D-Toledo): Obama 63.7-McCain 34.7 D+11

The only major changes are that Kaptur now has northern Lorain County instead of southern Lorain County and that she loses some outer Toledo suburbs due to population changes. Ohio’s current longest serving US Representative can stay for 10 more years if she wants to.

10.   Lime Green (Dennis Kucinich D-Cleveland): Obama 51.8-McCain 46.8 R+2

This is the toss-up seat though Kucinich will likely lose if he ran here. I’d expect former Cuyahoga County Republican chairman Rob Frost to run for this seat and win against Kucinich. The local press is already printing articles about it and we don’t even have a map yet. However, this seat could easily become Dem later in the decade if the Republicans have a bad year and the Dem isn’t Kucinich. I would, however, expect Kucinich to try and run here because this map is much more favorable to him than any of the others being discussed.

11.   Yellow (Marcia Fudge D-Warrensville Heights): Obama 85.3-McCain 14.0 D+32, 51.1% VAP black, VRA black

Since there aren’t enough blacks in Cleveland for a district and it needs the tail through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park to inner city Akron to be VRA compliant, this will be the ugliest shaped district in the state. However, the speaker of the Ohio House William Batchelder has told all the local black leaders that this district will be drawn in something similar to this form. Fudge could probably murder someone and still get re-elected here (though Congresswoman Fudge is generally a quiet, responsible person who wouldn’t do something crazy anyway). I also live here currently.

12.   Navy Blue (Tim Ryan D-Niles, also Betty Sutton D-Copley): Obama 62.4-McCain 35.7 D+10

Ryan would win the primary and probably the generally election fairly easily unless something crazy happens like Jim Trafficant making a comeback for his old seat as an independent, splitting the Democratic vote. It probably won’t happen but I wouldn’t put anything past the Youngstown Democrats. This district is Safe Dem as it stands now, but could start to drift toward competitiveness toward the end of the decade once no one is left living in Youngstown and Warren.

13.    Pink (Jim Renacci R-Wadsworth): McCain 50.6-Obama 47.5 R+5

Renacci should love this map since he keeps most of his old territory, loses inner-city Akron and gains more of heavily GOP Ashland County.

14.   Tan (Steve LaTourette R-Bainbridge Township): Obama 49.4-McCain 49.1 R+3

There’s really not much you can do to make this district safer because it is trapped by Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown. LaTourette will be safe here until he retires but it would be lean GOP after that.
 
15.   Maroon (Pat Tiberi R-Galena): McCain 54.9-Obama 43.7  R+9

Biting the bullet on a Columbus pack will make this safe. This area is trending toward the Democrats so a high PVI is necessary for 2020 if Tiberi retires before then. There is also a chance Stivers would try to run here.

16.    Black (Gibbs R-Lakeland): McCain 54.8-Obama 42.9  R+10

Gibbs would be quite safe here even though it has a lot of new territory.

Jim Jordan is making redistricting easy for the Ohio GOP.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/07/28/payback-coming.html

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan's open defiance of Speaker John Boehner's efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe seat in next year's election.

Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch today that Jordan's disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.

The chairman of the Republican Study Committee? Sounds like a reasonable target to me!

Of course, targeting Jordon will result in the Republican legislators whom vote to screw him being targeted in turn.

Let it play out!

Jim Jordan's hijinks as head of the Republican Study Committee may lose him his seat. (http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/07/28/payback-coming.html)

Edit: I see this was already posted in the Ohio redistricting contest thread for some reason.

If they could find a way to lump Jordan and Schmidt together into a district that would be a fun one to watch.

That won't happen. Turner and Austria are in the way.

Of course, it's very easy to give Jordan the ultimate "f--- you" by putting him in Boehner's district.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/07/john_boehner_says_he_is_not_pu.html

Now Boehner is saying that he won't target Jordan. He could change his mind, though, or think something else in private.

That assumes Jordan doesn't beat Boehner. That is just an assumption on your part.

I have to take issue with the rhetoric of "open defiance." Jim Jordan  was elected to represent the folks in the 4th district. He took an oath of loyality to the Constitution of the United States of America. He did not swear an oath to a political party, or its officiers.

While it is, of course, possible that Jordan can beat Boehner, I consider that possibility very remote. The plan that draws Jordan into Boehner's district would carve up the existing 4th. The 8th would probably only absorb Jordan's home county of Champaign, while the rest of the district would be carved up among Latta, Stivers, Tiberi,  and possibly even Renacci. This means that Boehner's base would remain intact. Also, the NRCC would undoubtedly support the Speaker over the thorn in the Speaker's side.

No doubt, the powers that be might very well try to stack the deck against Jordan. Then again, if the electorate in Ohio is for Jordan, it won't particularly matter.

I think it is a bit of an academic exercise. The question is simply who is in a position to punish whom?  Can the establishment meaningfully punish the Tea Party, or can the Tea Party punish the establishment? All this talk is predicated on the assumption that the establishment is flexing its muscle and putting some upstart in his place. The openness in which Jordan was threatened, I predict, will backfire. The establishment will back off out of fear of retribution from the Tea Party. Undoubtedly, Tea Party members will be screwed in redistricting, but, Jordan will probably not be one of them.

"One of the biggest thorns in Boehner’s side has been fellow Ohioan Jim Jordan, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. Earlier in the week, Republican lawmakers called for the firing of Jordan aides after it was revealed they had been coordinating an effort to “target” possible GOP “yes” votes with an outside interest group. The Columbus Dispatch reported Thursday that state legislators are working to splinter Jordan’s home turf in redistricting as retribution for his intransigence. By late Thursday night, GOP insiders were accusing Jordan of working his way into leadership meetings with rank-and-file members to disrupt their efforts to flip votes into the “yes” column."

I should probably engage in the exercise of "splintering" Jordan's CD just for kicks. It would be just such a piece of cake to do.  I could put his home in Boehner's district!  :P

I've consolidated it all back here. That leaves the contest thread for the contest.

Steve Latuorette is in charge.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/08/redistricting_gets_rolling_in.html

GOP Congressman Steve LaTourette of Bainbridge Township said he's been tapped by Boehner to put together the map that Ohio's Republican delegation will seek to see enacted by state lawmakers.

He said one Democratic district and one Republican district will be eliminated in the Ohio delegation's proposal. He acknowledged that "Cuyahoga County can't support all those congressional districts," but wouldn't say if Kucinich's district was the one headed for the junk yard.

Wimps!

Well I guess that settles that debate!

Per LaTourette's marching orders, flushing one Pubbie CD and one Dem one, below is my approach. OH-05, 07, 09, 11, 12 and 15 are tentatively close to final form. The lost Pubbie CD has to be ceding Columbus to the Dems. Anything else is kind of nutter really when you think about it. And that means Stivers and Jordan will be packed together, and I am sure LaTourette will try to stack the deck in favor of Stivers (who will have to move out of his cute house in a sea of Dems in Columbus). Tiberi is not running for the Senate, so his CD now takes in the marginal Lorain County burbs, since he is used to representing suburban Pubbies (I suspect Jordan would really underperform there, so the idea of putting OH-04 in there is out). I had to split the Cuyahoga burbs between too Pubbie CD's; otherwise OH-16 gets too marginal. As it is, OH-16 is 50% McCain, which is tolerable, but it can't go lower. It just can't. The bonus is that it is a nice compact looking CD.

And with OH-07 shorn of its Dem precincts in and around Columbus, it can easily suck up Athens County, and has.

I also skipped my testosterone shot this time, and am trying to keep the Pubbie incumbents in familiar territory where I can (except Jordan), and respect where I can municipal and county boundaries. The one exception to this will be the Youngstown CD. It just has to be an erose monster.

So here is the work in progress. Any comments are welcome.

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And here is the Cleveland area action:

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I have trouble believing the Republicans will draw the lines for the Youngstown district quite that erose. I've managed to get to 63.4% Obama looking pretty compact so I don't think the GOP will really go that far for a point or two. I also have trouble beliving they will draw part of Cleveland into the Toledo district to make OH-10 R+4 instead of R+3. Of course this could be the difference in an election, but I am doubting they'll do it when they can draw something like this in northeast Ohio instead and still be favored in the same districts:

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The green is 50.0-48.7 Obama and the tan is 49.8-48.6 Obama (not that you can do a whole lot here anyway). The yellow is 85.0-14.2 Obama and the navy blue is 63.4-37.4 (Obama).

I also think even if Tiberi has a suburban appeal, drawing northeastern Lorain County into a Columbus seat is a community of interest nightmare. I'd prefer giving him Canton or Mansfield... or pretty much anywhere else.

Good points TJ. But back when muon2 told me that putting eastern Cleveland into OH-09 was in the cards. Of course, that may have been wrong, or wrong now, but one point in that range is critical, particularly for one untested, not all that great maybe, and with new territory. If it were LaTourette, no problem.  The Youngstown CD probably can be less erose, given the ceding of Columbus.

If Tiberi is not going into Lorain per my approach, then it is either Jordan or Latta.  What do you think of Latta there?

Are you sure about your numbers for OH-16 (it looks more Dem to me), and what are they for LaTourette's CD?  It looks like you cut a bit more deeply into Cleveland.

I'd prefer Latta over Jordan or Tiberi, and he would be fine for the rural southern part of Lorain County or anything west of Lorain/Elyria. Avon and Avon Lake need to be with the Cleveland Republican district because those areas are an extension of the Bay/Westlake/ Rocky River suburbs and would be a terrible fit for any of them. Renacci (or whatever Republican ends up with that seat; I have some doubts it will be Renacci for very long and Cuyahoga County Republican Chair Rob Frost may primary him...but that won't change the national politics much if any) would be much better. If not, give them to Kaptur because any non-Northeast Ohio Republican is going to underperform badly.

If Dave's App is correct, then my numbers for OH-16 (I am assuming you mean the green one) are correct and they look right to me. The areas of this seat in Lorain and Summit Counties are very Republican and I've spent quite a bit of time carefully selecting the right precincts from Cleveland to give to Renacci. The cutoff is around 67 or 68% Obama. Most of the ugliness of bringing OH-9 in here just removes a bunch of 60% ish precincts and replaces them with 45% ish precincts. The difference can almost be made up just by going into Lorain and Summit.

I did the same on the east side and the chunk of Beachwood, Lyndhurst, South Euclid, and University Heights LaTourette would get is truthfully not much different than the areas of Summit, Portage, and Trumbull Counties that he’d get more of if he didn’t pick up that area. This is ~10 or so precincts that are 60% Obama instead of 55% Obama. It does split more municipal lines, but it makes the map look much cleaner. It also makes it easier to get OH-11 to 50% VAP black, and thus it can take more of the west side and less of Akron. This is a high SES area so I also expect LaTourette to do much better than McCain.

Torie,

I would try to split South East Ohio a bit more.  The PVI's there are very deceptive.

If you're trying to see what will happen with only one Democratic seat eliminated, then why are you still trying to eliminate both Sutton and Kucinich? It makes more sense to give Sutton a Democratic district based in Western Cuyahoga and Summit. Failure to do so will only weaken the freshman Renacci by forcing his district into the Cleveland suburbs.


I also agree with this. Remember that the 6th was a throwaway district for Strickland.

The problem is that the Republicans really need to give the Democrats a seat in Columbus to have a safe map. If they keep Sutton or Kucinich they can't do that without eliminating two Republicans. Plus, it really doesn't help any of their incumbents to keep either Sutton or Kucinich. Clearly the west side of Cleveland isn't Renacci's idea district, but would it be better to combine him with Gibbs and make them fight it out in a primary? There just aren't enough Republican seats to go around without drawing Renacci into Kucinich's seat and preserving Kucinich doesn't help any of their other incumbents any. There's no reason at all why the Republicans should draw four Democratic seats in northern Ohio. It just doesn't help anyone.

I don't think that's the OH-6 he intends to draw. I think that's the current one.

Here's my attempt:

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OH-01 (blue) - 51.4 Obama, 47.5 McCain
OH-02 (green) - 55.4 McCain, 43.0 Obama
OH-03 (purple) - 50.6 McCain, 48.0 Obama
OH-04 (red, formerly OH-18) - 52.0 McCain, 45.7 Obama
OH-05 (yellow) - 56.1 McCain, 41.9 Obama
OH-06 (teal) - 52.3 McCain, 45.4 Obama
OH-07 (grey) - 51.7 McCain, 46.7 Obama
OH-08 (light purple) - 61.9 McCain, 36.4 Obama
OH-09 (sky blue) - 61.2 Obama, 37.1 McCain
OH-10 (magenta) - 61.1 Obama, 37.4 McCain
OH-11 (light green) - 81.8 Obama, 17.4 McCain, 50.5% black VAP
OH-12 (light purple Columbus) - 51.1 Obama, 47.6 McCain
OH-13 (pink, formerly OH-17) - 61.1 Obama, 37.0 McCain
OH-14 (brown) - 49.9 McCain, 48.6 Obama
OH-15 (orange) - 51.2 Obama, 47.1 McCain
OH-16 (khaki) - 51.3 McCain, 47.0 Obama

Jordan is dumped in with Boehner, Sutton is either in with Fudge or LaTourette (Copley is split between the two districts). It would probably be better for Republicans to get rid of Sutton than Kucinich, since Dennis is a gadly with no chance of ever running for statewide office. Otherwise, most Reps have to sacrifice a bit to spread out the danger.

This map is far to marginal for the GOP.  Its almost what I would expect out of a commission whose goal was to create the most sprawling competitive districts possible.  The only safe seats for Republicans would be 2, 5, and 8.  All the recently ousted Dems could easily retake their seats in 1, 4(18), 6, 15, and 16.  Also the map puts the previously safe 7 at higher risk and does little to shore up 3 and 12 which are being held only because of the strength of the incumbents.  (14 is a lost cause for Republicans once Latourette is gone)  Then of course the current Dem incumbents have safe seats in 9, 10, 11, and 13.  The only thing this map does to benefit the GOP is eliminate Sutton's district.

Republicans really just need to bit the bullet and trade a Cleveland Dem seat for a Columbus Dem pack.  It would make the rest of the seats so much easier to hold IMO.  Otherwise they are risking a repeat of the '06 and '08 disasters.  Eliminate Jordan and Schmidt and force Kucinich to move out west.

Eastern Ohio looks pretty good to me. The Pubbie pawns in the west need to be moved around, but that is just cleanup work. OH-06 was troublesome, and required a gerrymander of Jefferson County to get the McCain percentage up to where I wanted it. 

          McCain  %

OH-11  14.8%
OH-15  29.1%
Oh-09  31.9%
OH-13  33.6%
OH-14  49.1%
OH-06  50.1%
OH-16  50.3%
OH-10  54.5%

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According to this article (http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/549636/Sixth-District-rep-now-lives-in-Marietta.html?nav=5061), Johnson moved from Poland (Mahoning County) to Marietta (Washington County). You should take this into account.

Well isn't that just special!  LOL.  Well either there will be two incumbents in OH-10, or Holmes County will need to be appended to OH-06 in a game of CD musical chairs, or Johnson will need to move back. Interesting. Thanks for the heads us.

And voila.  Piece of cake!  It did motivate me to change the CD numbers a bit. It does make it tough to get the Butternut area with all those Tory Dems (OH-06 now) up to totally comfortable levels, but this will have to more or less do.


         McCain  %

OH-11  14.8%
OH-15  29.1%
Oh-09  31.9%
OH-13  33.6%
OH-14  49.1%
OH-10  50.3%
OH-16  51.3%
OH-06  51.7%

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Jordan against Boehner hah. Brilliant. Especially as with today's GOP primary electorate Jordan very well could win.

Jordan ought to win.

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The map below shows how the existing lines have changed. I tried to minimize the changes - for the Pubbies of course. Old OH-04 (Jordan) and OH-15 (Stivers) have merged).

So the new OH-04 has:

302,149 from Jordan's old OH-04
289,324 from Stivers' old OH-15
128,199 new territory but all in Franklin and Delaware Counties (in the Columbus media market)

So based on geography alone, and if Stivers moves, advantage Stivers. But of course, it won't be all based on geography. It needed to be set up as a reasonably fair fight, or the Tea Party might declare war, and that is not in the Pubbies' interest, so it should not, and I assume, will not, happen.

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I really don't know why Boehner would want to play Russian Roulette by putting Jordan in his CD.  But who knows.

Jordan lives in Champaign County, not Greene. Austria lives in Greene. Johnny got confused, I guess. It is a terrible idea to do that in any event.

Right, I put him in Stivers' district (which was, in fact, my intention). Duh. Stupid rectangular counties.

Welcome to the Midwest! 

With homage to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. :)

I have to explain the concept of a township to more people to an impressively large number of people from other parts of the country who seem to think it means a variety of different things. Every time someone asks me where I'm from, I always have to think about whether or not it is worth naming the township I grew up in and explaining it, or just saying I'm from Sandusky and calling it a day.

No one in Minnesota ever says that they are from ________ Township. They are just from "outside *nearest city/town*"

Just for fun, I explored the option of the 4th Dem CD being in the Cleveland-Akron-Canton area rather than Columbus. This iteration of the a 4th Dem CD is in white, and went 60.6% for Obama. Gorgeous isn't it?  The Pubblie flushee in this scenario would be Gibbs in Holmes county, or he would fight it out with Renassci (sp) in Medina County, or maybe Gibbs in Washington County depending on how the balance of the map works.  

I wonder if something like this is in the wind,, monstrous looking though it is (with OH-11 and OH-13 (now the Sutton CD), both having parallel tails running south to Akron (OH-11 to pick up the blacks in Akron, and OH-13 to pick up the white Dems).  There is no other way to do it. Under this scenario, OH-10 (formerly OH-13 in my previous map) would take in all of Mahoning, as well as all of much of Columbiana, Jefferson and Belmont Counties,, and that might explain why Johnson moved from Mahoning down south along the Ohio River to Washington County. Wheels within wheels.

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Yoohoo!  Everyone.  Wake up!  There is no way the Republicans IN CONRTOL in Ohio are going to create a Democratic district in Columbus.  They didn't need to do it for this decade, they won't have to for the next.  They just divide the city into three and spread it with Republican heavy suburbs.  Problem solved.  So stop all of the maps involving a heavy Dem district in Columbus.

The world of 2000, is far different from what the world of 2020 will be like. This map has to last for 10 years and I don't know if the GOP is going to get away with a split of Colombus for much longer, even if it's three ways, without one or more of the seats falling. And they likely won't be able to come back in 2015 and redistrict mid decade like Texas may be planning to do.

If the Ohio GOP wants to continue splitting Columbus rather than packing it, they really need to split it four ways this time because three has already cost them the Kilroy/Stivers seat and Tiberi's is only safe if he's the incumbent and even with him, there's a limit which may be approached as we move toward 2020. Austria can handle a little more of Columbus than he currently has, but not nearly enough to stall the GOP's demographic problems in Columbus. To make it worse, the Columbus area is the fastest growing in the state. It really needs to either be packed or split four ways.

I have some updates about how this might be starting to shape up.  Apparently, the Republicans are planning to eliminate Sutton's district and give Kucinich a swing district that, though not necessarily out of reach for the Democrats, would be impossible for Kucinich to hold.  Columbus will likely be cracked three ways (much the same as it currently is).  Also, Jordan's seat doesn't seem to be on the chopping block.  They seem to be planning to merge two of the following freshmen's districts, Renacci, Gibbs, and Johnson, and letting them fight it out in a primary (though which two has not been decided).  Apparently, there was concern that Jordan might defeat Stivers or Boehner in a primary.  Bare in mind that these are just rumors I heard recently, however, they come from a pretty credible source.

Certainly very logical. That plan though would likely require that the black district stay in Cuyahoga.

Not necesarily, you can get OH-10 to about R+3.4 or so with the black district 50.1% VAP going to Akron and without OH-9 coming into Cuyahoga. The following is R+3.36 using 2008 presidential numbers:

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Here's the corresponding OH-11:

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It looks hideous, but don't all the VRA OH-11s?

That rumor is very logical. Except for their OH-10 plans, it's what I've been predicting for months.

I guess that is possible, but Latuorette is taking some less than desirable areas there.

Cut: failure of basic arithmetic on my part.

No, if the GOP puts Renacci in Kucinich's seat, Gibbs and Johnson would each get their own. The only problem with this is that Renacci might not be a perfect fit for Cleveland.

Right: got confused about the numbering. Sorry.