Incumbent results Nov. 6
Ohio House: 82-2 (15 races had no incumbent)
Ohio Senate: 16-0 (2 races had no incumbent)
U.S. House: 13-1 (2 races had no incumbent; 1 race had 2 incumbents)
Backers of Ohio Issue 2 say it’s ironic that Ohioans soundly rejected the effort to change the way political districts are drawn in the same election in which the imbalances they hoped to change were as pronounced as ever.
Consider these results from Tuesday’s election:
- Assuming the unofficial results are confirmed, 98 Ohio House and Senate incumbents won and just two lost.
- Just one U.S. House incumbent lost, and that was due to Ohio losing two congressional seats, which meant two incumbents faced each other.
- Blowouts were the rule. Of Ohio's 117 state legislative races, 101 were decided by safe margins of 10 percentage points or more.
The results will likely mean that Republicans keep their 23-10 margin in the Senate, and add to their totals in the House, going from 59-40 Republican to 60-39 Republican.
“When the vote is split roughly 50-50 (in Ohio) and one party gets three-quarters of the districts, something is seriously wrong,” said Ohio State University political science professor Dan Tokaji, who was part of the Voters First group that created Issue 2.
But Ohio Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina, co-chair of a legislative task force on redistricting, said Issue 2’s focus on competitive districts was misguided.
“We could make all these districts roughly 50-50 if we ignore the Voting Rights Act, and we split counties like Montgomery into splinter areas, or spider-web districts across the state,” Faber said. “But one study showed that voter dissatisfaction went up exponentially when you had districts where people weren’t represented by people who shared their values.”
Safe districts
The groups pushing for redistricting reform say Ohio’s current map-drawing system does three basic things on Election Day — protects incumbents, nearly ensures that the map-drawing party will stay in control and all but eliminates close races.
That is essentially what happened on Tuesday. There were 19 races where the margin was 75-25 or larger, and only 16 races where the margin was competitive (55-45 or closer). That’s surprising in a state where the presidential margin of victory has not been more than 6.5 percentage points in the past 20 years.
Faber said the fact that the Ohio House briefly flipped to Democratic control in the 2008 election shows that the line-drawing process is not all-powerful. He said Ohio is more Republican than presidential voting results show, making the state legislative balance make sense.
But recent election results seem to show Ohio matching its swing state reputation. Democrats (2006) and Republicans (2010) each dominated one state-office election, and Democrats narrowly won the last two presidential elections (2008, 2012) in Ohio.
“The mere fact that incumbents win re-election is not in and of itself indicative of a problem,” Faber said. “It may be that incumbents win re-election because people believe they represent their districts well.”
Issue 2 backers say whichever party is in control of map-drawing — which, following recent censuses, has been Republicans — jams as many of its foes as possible into a few districts, leaving the rest of the districts in their hands. That theory played out in Ohio’s 16 U.S. House districts, as Republicans earned 51.4 percent of the total vote Nov. 6, to Democrats’ 46.5. But Republicans won 75 percent of the seats (12 of 16), because all four Democratic wins were 40-point blowouts.
Tokaji said that approach creates safe districts where the winners write legislation for the extremes of their party — an argument seconded by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, who told the Columbus Dispatch that it creates a “toxic political environment because everybody is so partisan.”
“When we see the extreme policies being promoted … on workers’ rights, voters’ rights, women’s rights, we know that something is out of whack,” Tokaji said. “That’s just not where the median voter is.”
What’s next?
Ohio voters on Tuesday shot down Issue 2 by a 63-37 ratio, but that won’t end the argument for redistricting reform. Both sides agree the map-drawing process could be improved, but for now there is widespread disagreement on how to do it.
Faber said he hopes his task force can make suggestions this year, with the state legislature approving them for the next redistricting cycle in 2022. He said that’s the best chance for good reform, because neither party knows who will be in control then.
Tokaji said Issue 2 backers “would be delighted” to sit down with the leadership of both parties to find a solution, but that the current system is too damaged to wait 10 years for a fix. And Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern has said he thinks there will be a push to put the issue back on the ballot in 2013.
Regardless, all Ohio House and U.S. House members, plus half of the Ohio Senate will run for re-election again in 2014. Tokaji argues that you can largely predict the results of those races today, and not because of the strengths or weaknesses of the candidates.
Faber disagrees. “Candidates make the difference in every race,” he said. “If you have good candidates, you’ll win seats you shouldn’t have won, and if you have a bad candidate, you’ll lose a seat you should have won.”
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