COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohioans in 2015 overwhelmingly voted for new redistricting rules to reduce gerrymandering their state legislative districts. But Republicans on Wednesday delivered new Ohio House and Senate maps that from a high level, deliver a very similar result.
Chris Cusack, a geography professor working on redistricting issues with Common Cause Ohio, a good-government group, said upon cursory review, the new maps “look” less unusual, with district lines generally appearing more orderly, singling out as an example the Senate districts in Cuyahoga County. The new rules include stricter limits on how communities can be split.
But, he said, the political outcome is the same.
“Such types of overtly egregious examples are not as prevalent in the newly approved maps, although the partisan bias remains secure to the same extent,” he said.
Although the numbers are close, the new maps score as slightly less competitive, and slightly less politically proportionate than the ones they will replace, according to a model by Dave’s Redistricting App, a popular redistricting website. The DRA model grades both the old and new maps “OK” on proportionality and “very bad” on competitiveness.
Breaking it down, Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, says the new maps create districts likely to give Republicans 62 out of 99 House seats and 23 of 33 Senate seats, although Dave’s Redistricting projects 65 House seats for Republicans. Either way, Republicans should be able to maintain their veto-proof supermajority in both chambers, which falls at the 60% threshold, or more than 59 seats in the House and 20 seats in the Senate. Republicans, meanwhile, have gotten 53% of the vote over the past 10 years in nonjudicial statewide elections.
Dave’s projections for the old maps -- which will remain in effect through next year -- are 65 Republican House seats and 23 Republican Senate seats. Republicans actually control 64 House seats and 25 Senate seats, with Sens. Stephanie Kunze, of suburban Columbus, and Matt Dolan, of Chagrin Falls, both holding suburban districts that recently have trended Democratic.
Cusack said there can be a trade-off between making maps that are politically proportionate and those that are competitive.
“These maps actually kind of fall down on both regards,” he said of the new maps. “They’re not really proportional and they don’t have very many districts at all that are competitive.”
Overall, Cusack said the new map tends to be more likely to “waste” votes in Democratic districts, meaning these voters are more likely to be packed into fewer, concentrated districts, rather than attempting to distribute them and making outlying districts more competitive.
“The Republicans knew what they were doing. It’s deliberate,” Cusack said. “I don’t think it’s in the spirit of reforms Ohioans twice voted strong support for.”
The new maps are the first drawn under Ohio’s new redistricting process, approved as a constitutional amendment in 2015. The new rules limit how cities and counties can be split, but add a new political test, requiring that maps be politically proportionate while not benefitting either party. This led observers to wonder if the seat allocation would be closer to the statewide vote share, and under the 60% supermajority threshold.
But unless state political dynamics change -- or the Ohio Supreme Court rules against them -- under the new lines, things at the Statehouse are likely to stay the same. Republicans justify not allocating districts closer to their 54% vote share by arguing a legal theory that the new proportionality rules should factor in their dominance at winning recent statewide elections. They’ve also downplayed the importance of the district lines, saying stronger candidates can win in districts weighted against them.
Below are the current maps, which have been in effect since 2012. The current maps will expire at the end of 2022, and next year’s elections will fill seats in the new maps, which begin in 2023.
Here are the new ones:
Both the old and new maps have similar numbers of competitive districts.
In the current, soon-to-expire maps, seven Senate districts rank as competitive, meaning the expected advantage for either Democrats or Republicans is within 10%. Of those districts, five lean Republican while two lean Democratic. The new Senate maps have nine competitive seats, with six leaning Republican, one toss-up and two Democratic.
Narrowing the definition further, only three of the competitive Senate seats in both the old and new maps fall within 5%. Republicans won all three of those seats in 2020, and Kunze narrowly kept the fourth seat, even though it was nearly +7 Democratic.
One of the new competitive Senate districts is in the Cleveland area. The new District 24, which leans 7 points Democratic, combines Berea and Parma with the west side Cuyahoga County suburbs of Rocky River, Bay Village and Westlake. Republican legislators assigned Dolan, of Chagrin Falls, to represent the district, even though he doesn’t live there. Dolan is term-limited, making it an open seat in 2024 when his term expires, and likely an appealing target for Democrats. The other new competitive district is a toss-up in the Dayton area, a seat currently held by Sen. Niraj Antani, a Republican.
The new Senate map makes some other changes to the Cleveland area. It splits Lakewood -- where current Sen. Nickie Antonio lives -- from west side suburbs, grouping it instead in with a Cleveland district represented by Sen. Sandra Williams, who is term-limited. It creates a sprawling, +7 Republican Senate district for Sen. Kristina Roegner, of Hudson, that encompasses southern Cuyahoga County, part of Geauga County, northern and western Summit County and Solon.
Both sets of maps have 20 House seats that are competitive -- although the current maps had 11 districts within 5 points or less, and the new ones only have eight. For the new maps, the competitive seats are evenly split between Republican and Democratic-leaning, with four -- districts in Canton, Kent, Parma and Cincinnati -- separated by 1% or less.
The new House map has 10 seats that are at least partially in Cuyahoga County, with an average Democratic advantage of 33 points. There are 11 in the current map, with an average Democratic advantage of 37 points, and only one, held by Strongsville Rep. Tom Patton, with a Republican edge.
The most competitive seats in Cuyahoga County are District 15, a +1 Democratic district based in Parma that’s likely to attract Rep. Jeff Crossman, of Parma, and District 23, a toss-up district that includes some of Solon, Twinsburg and part of Geauga County where Republican state Rep. Diane Grendell lives. Crossman’s presumed district is 3 points more Republican than it used to be. The new Republican voters in the district could threaten his re-election next year. Grendell, meanwhile, finds herself in a much more Democratic district compared to her current one, which is +21 Republican. Current Solon Rep. Phil Robinson, meanwhile, lives in a different part of Solon that will fall in new District 22, and will go from living in a +3 Democratic district to a +44 one that also will include Bedford, Bedford Heights, Garfield Heights and Pepper Pike.
The new map also strengthens the Republican score for the district including Strongsville, shoring up Patton’s chances, making it +13 Republican, mostly by dropping Berea and the surrounding area.
This story has been updated to reflect that Rep. Phil Robinson does not live in the part of Solon contained in the new District 23, and that Rep. Diane Grendell does. It also has been corrected to reflect there are 11 House seats in Cuyahoga County in the current map and 10 in the new one, not 12 and 11.
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