Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation ventures to Ohio, a traditionally swingy state that took a hard right turn in 2016, and where the GOP dominates the state government. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new data sets; you can also find all of our calculations from 2016 and past cycles here.
Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton 52-44 in Ohio last year, a huge improvement for the GOP from Barack Obama’s 51-48 win over Mitt Romney four years before. The GOP holds a massive 66-33 majority in the state House (one Democratic-held seat is vacant, and Daily Kos Elections assigns open seats to the party that last held them), and an even-stronger 24 to nine edge in the state Senate. The entire state House is up every two years, while half of the Senate was up in 2016 and the remaining seats will be up in 2018.
The GOP briefly lost control of the state House in 2008, but they won it back in the 2010 GOP wave. Team Red soon got to draw a map that would protect their majorities, and they made the most of their opportunity by narrowly winning three-fifths veto-proof majorities in 2012 despite Democratic House candidates winning more votes statewide that year. Even as Romney was narrowly losing the state in 2012, he still carried 19 of the 33 Senate seats and 60 of the 99 state House districts. Unsurprisingly, Trump did even better, taking 23 Senate districts and 66 House seats.
We’ll start with a look at the state House, where Trump flipped 13 Obama seats while surrendering seven Romney seats to Clinton. Trump dramatically improved on Romney’s performance in many predominantly white working class areas, including the traditionally Democratic Mahoning Valley around Youngstown, and there were some massive swings to the right in several House seats. The biggest swing toward Trump was in HD-90, a GOP-held seat which is located along the Kentucky border. While Romney won the seat 52-46 and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown managed to narrowly carry it during his 51-45 statewide win in 2012, Trump took the seat 69-28. Trump improved on Romney’s performance by at least a 10-point margin in 53 additional seats.
By contrast, Clinton improved on Obama in only 21 state House districts. Her biggest improvement over Obama was in HD-27 in the Cincinnati area, which swung from 61-38 Romney to 50-44 Trump. However, Republican state Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr. had no trouble winning re-election 64-36. Clinton improved on Obama by at least a 10-point margin in four other seats.
Last year, seven Democrats won in Trump seats while an equal number of Republicans won in Clinton districts. Of those seven Democrats, six represent seats that Obama had carried four years before. The one exception is Jack Cera, whose HD-96 runs along the West Virginia border. Romney carried the seat just 50-47, but Trump took it 66-30. However, Cera won re-election last year without any GOP opposition; Cera also holds the Trumpiest seat of any Democrat in the chamber. All six Democrats in Obama/Trump seats each survived some massive swings. The seat that swung the least was HD-75 east of Akron, which still drastically flipped from 55-43 Obama to 50-45 Trump.
One of those seven Democrats on Trump turf is John Boccieri, who won a competitive U.S. House seat in 2008 but lost in the 2010 GOP wave. Boccieri spent years eyeing a comeback, and in 2015, he was appointed to the open HD-59 around Youngstown. Last year, HD-59 swung from 51-47 Obama to 57-39 Trump, but Boccieri won 58-42.
We’ll turn to those seven Republicans in Clinton seats. Romney won all of their seats in 2012, but by very narrow margins in each. The Republican with the most pro-Clinton seat is Mike Duffey, who represents a Columbus-area seat. HD-21 went from 51-48 Romney to 54-41 Clinton, but Duffey won re-election 59-41. Seven additional Republicans hold Obama/Trump seats, while the aforementioned Jack Cera is the one Democrat to hold a Romney district.
It’s very clear that, if Democrats want any shot at winning a majority under this map in 2018 or 2020, they’ll need a lot of things to go right. One way to visualize this is to briefly look at Sherrod Brown’s 51-45 win over Republican Josh Mandel in the 2012 Senate race. Brown’s 6-point statewide win was just large enough to allow him to carry 50 of the 99 House seats—a bare majority. Another way to illustrate how much punishment the GOP majority can withstand is to sort each seat by Clinton's margin of victory over Trump and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted. The median seat backed Trump 55-39, about 8 points to the right of his 52-44 statewide win.
The good news for Buckeye State Democrats is that Ohio’s unusual redistricting process could give Democrats the chance to draw the legislative lines after the 2020 Census, or at least prevent the GOP from implementing another gerrymander. In 2015, voters approved a law that modifies Ohio’s legislative redistricting commission. Starting with the next round of redistricting, a commission consisting of the governor, the secretary of state, the state auditor, two members appointed by Democratic legislative leaders, and two members appointed by GOP legislative leaders will draw Ohio's legislative districts. It takes two votes from the minority party to pass a map for the whole decade … but there’s a catch.
There's nothing stopping the majority of the commission from just passing a map for four years; at the end of those four years, it only takes a simple majority to pass another map. In other words, anyone who wants to gerrymander the state legislature just needs to pass two or three maps over the decade instead of one. The 2015 reform also ostensibly bans maps that favor or disfavor a particular party overall, while the proportion of districts that lean toward each party should reflect the parties’ share of the statewide vote. However, it’s unclear just how effective these new provisions will be against more subtle partisan gerrymanders.
Right now, the GOP controls the governorship and holds the secretary of state and auditor posts. However, all three incumbents will be termed out in 2018. If Democrats can win just two of these three statewide posts next year, at the very least, Team Blue will be able to stop the GOP from having control over the whole process for four years.
We’ll turn to the state Senate, where the GOP’s 24 to nine majority looks even safer than their strong House edge. Trump won 23 seats, swapping six Obama seats for just two Romney districts. Two Senate Democrats hold Trump seats. Last year, Democratic state Rep. Sean O'Brien won an open seat 56-44, even as his SD-32, located in the northwest corner of the state, flipped from 58-40 Obama to 54-42 Trump. Democratic state Sen. Joseph Schiavoni, who is currently running for governor, was not up for re-election last year; his Youngstown-area SD-33 went from 58-41 Obama to 53-43 Trump.
Three Republicans hold Clinton seats. Two of those districts had backed Romney in 2012, and both of those Romney/Clinton districts were up in 2016. The one GOP-held Obama/Clinton seat in the chamber is the Columbus-area SD-03, which is represented by Kevin Bacon (who has probably already heard his share of six degrees of separation jokes). This district, which will next be up in 2018, went from 55-44 Obama to 53-42 Clinton. An additional four Republicans hold Obama/Trump seats, four of which are up in 2018.
Not surprisingly, the state Senate map is also brutal for Democrats. Trump carried the median seat 55-40, which is about the same as his performance in the median House seat. In 2012, Brown carried 17 of the 33 seats, again a very bare majority. The GOP has held the state Senate since the 1984 elections, but if 2018 goes well and gives Democrats the chance to stop Team Red from drawing another map, that could finally change.