So as you all have probably heard, a dark red tide has washed over Ohio in last week’s election. We lost ALL of the state wide races that were up (six out of seven were up). We lost five congressional districts, two state senate seats and 12 state house seats (with two more going to automatic recounts).
Our company lost three state rep clients and may lose one more based on an automatic recount.
A bloodbath.
But things CAN get worse.
Currently we have 18 congressional districts here in Ohio but we are likely to lose two of these in next years redistricting. Not only that, but the GOP now controls all aspects of redistricting Ohio for both Congressional seats and for state legislative seats.
Keep in mind that while we’re down to five congressional seats, we were one Nazi uniform wearing idiot (OH-09) and one double rape charge idiot (OH-13) away from only having three Dem seats coming out of this election. Dem share in OH-09 went from 74.37% down to 59.01% and it went from 64.55% down to 55.46% in OH-13 from 2008 to 2010.
Using Dave’s redistricting tool, I took a stab at what 16 districts could look like if the GOP really turns the screws and tries to maximize GOP seats.
Combining state house voting patterns, the demographic info on the redistricting tool and my knowledge of Toledo and Columbus, I believe the only reliably Democratic district is the dark blue one in Cuyahoga county. It is majority minority (42% white) as required by the voting rights act.
As for other city centers, Toledo is split down the middle based on my knowledge of the neighborhoods. I think I defused the rest of Cuyahoga county fairly well but some of the greater Youngstown area is in the dark purple district. Hard to say here. A lot of the African American population is in the green district (can’t see partisan breakdown but can see demographic) which is separated into the more affluent parts of Cuyahoga county.
Franklin county is in four pieces, each one reaching out to LOTS of rural areas. The salmon colored district at the western part of Franklin County (the more GOP parts of Dublin, Hilliard and Grove City) stretch to take in the more urban parts of Montgomery County which central area is broken into both the salmon and the olive green districts. The light green part of Montgomery county (which are more affluent) curves down to get some of the urban parts of Hamilton county, leaving the remaining parts of that in the slate blue district.
The population breakout is within tolerance based on my knowledge of how this works. Each district (based on 2008 population data) is to have 717,869 people. The highest deviation is -926 and the lowest is +5.