I mean isn't the general idea here that gerrymanders start to buckle when there's a strong shift – like from a populace opposed to their overstepping on a policy? Plus, aren't there state-wide offices this could affect in 2020?
I know people replied to this, but I'll add another wrinkle.
Gerrymanders live and die by cutting communities in half to diminish their power while placing them within hyper partisan areas. You know that, but it's a necessary topic sentence to explain Ohio.
We are a larger state by population but our urban centers are strewn to the state's corners and borders (Columbus aside) while our suburbs are, from personal experience, shockingly red. As such, it's difficult to find contiguous landmass with reliably liberal populations. Thereby, it's really easy for Republicans to carve our cities in two and lump the excised parts into suburbs and rural areas. As such, overcoming the gerrymander is a feat that our landmass and population centers can't really overcome without radically changing the districts, whether back to their 2000 borders or into something new.
Even then, I think you could reliably get liberal districts centered around - Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, two for Columbus if you were creative (maybe even 3), and might be able to conjure something up for Dayton and Youngstown. That still nets you 8-9 Dem districts...in a state with 16. And with the knowledge these won't be guaranteed and that the Youngstown area is declining precipitously.
Admittedly, that's better than the current situation but there's no magic bullet here unless the state somehow attracted an influx of liberals which ain't happening.
www.nytimes.com
