US House Redistricting: Ohio

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

Ohio 12-4




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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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

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

[krazen1211]

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.
 

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

Sure there is.





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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

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.

[krazen1211]

Unconstitutional racial gerrymander or no? (52% black)

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

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

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.

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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 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.

[krazen1211]

This is what a Dem pack in Cuyahoga looks like:




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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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.

[krazen1211]

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 to do 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 4,000 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 the its west side, so the final census numbers will be most interesting.
 

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%.