A Detailed Analysis of Ohio’s New Congressional Map
October 31, 2025 · 4:11 PM EDT
In a major departure from normal redistricting practices, four states have now approved new congressional maps for the 2026 midterms. (A fifth, California, looks like it will enact a new map via ballot measure next week, and several other states are making moves to redraw as well.) But the latest to do so is not like the others. While Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina opted to draw aggressive Republican gerrymanders as part of President Donald Trump’s nationwide push to tilt the House playing field toward Republicans, Ohio was legally required to pass a new map — and took a less cutthroat approach.
Now that the Buckeye State has passed a congressional map for 2026, Inside Elections is releasing our initial ratings for the state’s 15 House districts — three of which start out as competitive.
How We Got Here
Ohio has perhaps the nation’s most convoluted redistricting process. Per a state constitutional amendment passed in 2018, the legislature takes the first crack at drawing the state’s congressional map — but it must do so with a bipartisan supermajority. If the legislature fails, the task falls to a seven-member commission of Republican and Democratic politicians — but it, too, must pass a map with bipartisan support. If not, the legislature may pass a map by simple majority vote — but that map can only be used for half a decade.
Back in 2021 and 2022, Ohio went through this runaround not once, but almost two full times. The legislature passed a Republican gerrymander along party lines on its second attempt, but the state Supreme Court struck it down; round two ended when the commission (which has a 5-2 Republican majority) passed a tamer Republican gerrymander over Democrats’ objections. But that map was always scheduled to expire after the 2024 election, making Ohio the one state that was actually supposed to redistrict mid-decade.
This time around, the legislature once again blew past its deadline to pass a bipartisan map. And at first, the commission looked like it would do the same, allowing the GOP-controlled legislature to pass another Republican gerrymander that would be good for the rest of the decade. But earlier this week, Republicans and Democrats on the commission unexpectedly struck a deal. On Friday morning, the commission unanimously passed a new Ohio congressional map that is a bit better for Republicans than the old one — but still a far cry from the maximal GOP gerrymander that the legislature was likely to pass.
Why did Republicans agree to pull their punches? Democrats were threatening to organize a veto referendum against any map passed by the legislature, and merely collecting enough signatures to force a vote would have put the map on hold. The commission’s map, though, is not subject to a veto referendum.
Overview of the New Map
As mentioned, the congressional map Ohio used in 2022 and 2024 was already pretty good for Republicans. According to Inside Elections’ Baseline, our measure of the baseline partisanship of states and congressional districts, the old map had 10 districts that were R+5 or redder and just two districts that were D+5 or bluer. However, it also had three districts that were in the competitive zone between R+5 and D+5, and so far this decade, Democrats have won all three of those seats, resulting in a 10-5 Republican delegation.
The new map, though, takes two of those competitive seats and moves them into the Republican-leaning bucket, albeit narrowly. As a result, the new map has 12 seats that are R+5 or redder, two seats that are D+5 or bluer, and only one seat in between.
Another way of measuring how gerrymandered Ohio’s map is is a statistic called efficiency gap, which compares how many of one party’s votes are “wasted” versus the other’s. (For these purposes, a “wasted” vote is one cast for the losing party or for the winning party after it already won a majority in a district.) Based on the results of the 2024 presidential election, Ohio’s old map had an efficiency gap of R+13, indicating that Republicans wasted 13 percentage points fewer votes than Democrats did. The new map’s efficiency gap is up to R+20.
District by District
Let’s start with those two purple seats that have gotten more Republican. The Baseline of Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman’s 1st District, anchored around Cincinnati, goes from D+3 to R+5 by exchanging some blue suburbs for red exurbs in Hamilton County; the district also adds deep-red Clinton County.
However, the seat remains very competitive. Most elections here over the past decade would have been within single digits under the new lines. For instance, Trump would have carried this version of the 1st District by 3 points in 2024, but former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown would have carried it by 2 points. And in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden would have barely won it, 49.3 percent to 49.2 percent.
In 2024, under the old lines, Landsman won re-election in the 1st District by 9 points as then-Vice President Kamala Harris was carrying it by 6 points. A similar overperformance in 2026 would point to a tied race. Landsman already faces a few Republican challengers, such as former CIA officer Eric Conroy and dentist Steven Erbeck, but others are likely to take a fresh look at the race given the new lines. The 1st District starts out as a Toss-up in our ratings.
To the north, Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur — the longest-serving woman in congressional history — is in a deeper hole. Her 9th District, which runs along the Michigan border and the Lake Erie coast from Toledo to Sandusky, was already tough for a Democrat, but it has gotten even tougher with the addition of a few conservative inland counties. Its Baseline moves from R+3 to R+8 as a result. Only one Democrat would have carried the new district in a statewide race over the past decade: Brown in 2018. More often, Republicans win here by double digits, as Trump did in 2024 (by 11 points).
Kaptur, though, is a proven overperformer. In 2022, she won by 13 points in a district that Trump would carry by 7 points two years later. However, her opponent that year was the scandal-plagued J.R. Majewski, who attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and exaggerated his military service. In 2024, facing a more establishment Republican, Kaptur triumphed by less than a single point (that was still 8 points better than Harris’ margin, though).
Shortly after the commission passed the new map, Kaptur affirmed that she would be running for re-election in 2026. Can she turn in an overperformance closer to 2022’s than 2024’s? On one hand, not having to run on the same ticket as a Democratic presidential candidate should help. On the other, she has already drawn several credible opponents, including former state Rep. Derek Merrin (her 2024 foe), state Rep. Josh Williams, and Air National Guard Lt. Col. Alea Nadeem. The new district also conspicuously scoops up the home of state Senate President Rob McColley, who is reportedly on the verge of announcing a campaign for the seat as well. We are starting this race out as Tilt Republican.
Ohio’s final competitive House seat is the 13th District, anchored by Summit County (Akron) south of Cleveland. Unlike the other two, however, the 13th District gets a bit bluer under the new lines; it sheds part of Republican-leaning Stark County and picks up the Democratic-voting city of Kent. Accordingly, its Baseline ticks up from D+2 to D+4.
Republicans have carried this district in a few recent statewide elections, such as the 2022 gubernatorial race, so it remains competitive going forward. However, the new lines should make it easier for Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes to win re-election. Former state Sen. Kevin Coughlin, whom Sykes defeated by 2 points in 2024, looks likely to be the GOP nominee again in 2026. We’re starting the 13th District out at Lean Democratic.
Most of Ohio’s other districts also undergo some changes under the new map, some of them substantial. For instance, about a third of Rep. Bob Latta’s and Rep. Michael Rulli’s constituents will be new to them; Latta’s 5th District is now a much more compact north-central-Ohio-based district, while Rulli’s 6th no longer stretches as far into Appalachia.
That said, none of these changes fundamentally shift the partisanship of these other districts. Our initial read is that they all start as solid for the incumbent party. However, three of these districts — Rep. Max Miller’s 7th, Rep. Mike Turner’s 10th, and Rep. Mike Carey’s 15th — each have Baselines of R+10, putting them on the outer fringes of competitiveness. If the 2026 election develops into a “blue wave” midterm similar to 2018, they could conceivably become vulnerable. (Turner could also be a threat to retire after losing his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.) We will of course keep our ratings updated as the cycle plays out.