Ohio officials approve new congressional map that favors Republicans to win two more U.S. House seats

The Ohio Redistricting Commission has approved a new congressional map with bipartisan approval even though it tilts the state more in favor of Republicans. 

This ends months of speculation that the Republican-led legislature might try to manipulate the redistricting process to give them maximum leverage to redraw an even more partisan congressional map. 

On paper, the map favors Republicans to win 12 of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats, compared to the 10 they hold under the current map. Republicans could win as many as 13 seats. Democrats meanwhile likely are capped at four or perhaps five. 

With a unanimous vote from the Ohio Redistricting Commission on Friday, the map will go into effect for the 2026 primary and general elections and remain in place through 2031.

Republicans drew the map, which comes as Republican President Donald Trump has pressured GOP lawmakers in other states to take unprecedentedly aggressive steps to pass gerrymandered maps to help Republicans keep their slim majority in Congress.

But a deal between the state’s two Republican and two Democratic legislative leaders paved the way for its approval.

Why Republicans and Democrats agreed

In essence, Democrats under duress traded an increasingly safe seat held by Cincinnati U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman by agreeing to make the district Republican-leaning. In exchange, they made the Akron-anchored district held by U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes a little more Democratic-leaning.

Also losing out in the deal is longtime U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, who’s managed to win tough reelections in 2022 and 2024 even as her district has trended more Republican. Kaptur’s new district goes from one that President Donald Trump won by 7 points to one that Trump won by 10 points.

Republicans, in turn, agreed to not pursue an even more aggressively Republican-leaning map that would have helped them safely win 13 seats. Democrats’ main source of leverage was a threat to put the map up for a statewide referendum vote, which could have frozen the current map at least through the 2026 election. The bipartisan deal takes that option off the table.

The second bipartisan deal struck under new redistricting rules

The congressional map deal marks the second time that Republicans and Democrats have agreed to approve new political maps since Ohio voters overhauled the redistricting system last decade.

Republicans said Friday that shows that the system, which was billed to voters as promoting bipartisanship, is working as intended.

“I think throughout this process, both parties accepted the benefits and the drawbacks of adopting a bipartisan map,” said state Rep. Brian Stewart, a Republican who co-chaired the redistricting commission.

Democrats meanwhile described their vote as the best of bad options – logic that’s identical to their reasoning for approving Republican-drawn state legislative maps in 2023.

Democrats said during private negotiations, Republicans also showed them a map that would have locked in a 13-2 Republican advantage in the congressional delegation, and said they planned to pass it if Democrats didn’t come to the table.

So Democrats agreed to map that was approved on Friday. They think it will at least give Democrats a chance to retain all five seats they currently hold.

“I do believe with this vote, we have averted a disaster,” Nickie Antonio, the ranking Democrat in the Ohio Senate, said after the hearing.

Democrats’ negotiating position weakened significantly after the 2022 elections, when a new Republican chief justice replaced another one who had been the swing vote rejecting seven Republican-passed maps.

Democrats then backed an amendment in 2024 that would have overhauled the state’s redistricting system. But voters rejected it by a strong margin. 

Democrats on Friday reiterated they think the redistricting process should be reformed.

“All I’ll say is I’ve been involved in two processes now, and every time we were operating the Democrats were operating under the under the duress of threats of an extreme, of an extreme map,” Antonio said.

Democrats’ activist allies blast map deal

Activist groups mostly allied with Democrats, including those that protested the 2023 legislative district maps, blasted both parties for their votes on Friday.

Mia Lewis with Common Cause Ohio criticized the map for its lack of geographic compactness, pointing out how it breaks up the Columbus area into districts sprawling across the state.

Lewis also pointed out a more below-the-radar facet of the map. The map shores up districts for Republicans whose districts had been trending bluer, such as Columbus Rep. Mike Carey.

“This process doesn’t work,” Lewis said. “There is no better post child for the need for an independent citizens redistricting commission than what is on display here today.”

Reviews among the Democratic Party were mixed. Democrats in Cincinnati and Toledo have panned the compromise publicly and privately. But generally, national Democrats have said they accept their Ohio counterparts’ reasoning.

“This compromise keeps us on the path to taking back the House majority and we’ll continue to win across Ohio because voters know it’s House Democrats who are fighting for them,” said U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

On the other side of the aisle, the map also has received criticism from national pro-Trump political figures, who criticized Republicans for not pursuing a more maximally Republican-skewed map.

But acceptance seems relatively high among Republicans around Ohio.

Bob Paduchik, a former Ohio Republican Party chairman, called the new map a “12 and a half map for Republicans,” a reference to the GOP’s on-paper advantage in 12 districts and their ability to win the 13th District represented by Sykes.

“I’ve run a lot of campaigns in Ohio, and with all my political experience is in this state… I look at this 12-and-a-half map and I think it’s a great thing for the Republican Party,” Paduchik said.

More on the districts

Here’s how the voters within the new districts voted in the 2024 presidential election, had the lines existed then.

Note: An earlier version of this table inverted the results for the 12th district. It has been corrected.

Here is the map’s official partisan scoring, which incorporates all partisan statewide election results between 2016 and 2024.