TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — With President Donald Trump's poll numbers fading, beleaguered Florida Democrats hoped this year would be an opportunity to gain ground in the state.
But now they're looking at the possibility of losing up to four U.S. House seats in the midterms because of a new congressional map passed this week by the Republican-controlled legislature.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said redistricting will reflect Florida's population growth and political
leanings. Democrats called it a power grab by Trump, who has been urging Republicans to redraw maps across the country.
The changes use both “packing and cracking,” the principal tools of gerrymandering. Packing involves concentrating like-minded voters into fewer districts, or into a single district, to minimize their overall impact across multiple districts. Cracking involves spreading like-minded voters across more districts, making it harder for them to influence any single district’s election.
Under the new lines, there are 24 districts where Trump won in 2024 by double digits, according to analysts from both parties. If Republicans win all of them, it will be a gain of four seats.
Although there will almost certainly be legal challenges to the map, here’s a look at how the new boundaries affect Florida’s current Democratic-controlled districts.
Pinellas and Hillsborough counties were, not that long ago, regarded as two of the most populous swing counties in U.S. politics. Voters in and around Tampa and St. Petersburg served as a bellwether in presidential contests.
Currently, the core metro area is split between the right-leaning district represented by Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and the left-leaning district represented by Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. The new map splits that into three districts, all of which tilt Republican, and Castor's seat now includes more conservative rural areas.
She called the new designs “blatantly illegal” because of Florida’s state constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering. But she said, “No matter how new districts are drawn, I will keep fighting for Tampa Bay families.”
Luna, a top Democratic target in November, picked up more Republican-leaning precincts, but Democrats in Washington said they could still win the seat given Trump’s lagging popularity.
Right now, Democrats Darren Soto and Maxwell Frost have adjoining districts in and around Orlando, with Frost’s concentrated in the city and Soto’s covering Kissimmee and extending south and east over much of Osceola County.
Now, the Orlando metro core will become a single district that is all but guaranteed to go Democratic. Meanwhile, other parts of Orlando will become part of a separate district that's more sprawling and more Republican.
Frost blasted the design for pairing city residents with voters who live a two-hour drive away. “That’s how hard DeSantis map-makers had to work to dilute the impact of voters in Orange County and make this district red,” he said on social media.
Soto, who is Puerto Rican and represents many Puerto Ricans now, lashed out at the governor.
“DeSantis declared war against Florida’s 1.3M Puerto Ricans,” he wrote on social media. “We are American citizens, our people served and died for this country, and we vote.”
The new map singles out a heavily Black south Florida district that had been represented by Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick before her recent resignation during a House ethics inquiry into her use of campaign funds. The district was drawn originally to comply with Voting Rights Act provisions that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gutted on Wednesday.
DeSantis described the district as an egregious race-based gerrymander, with most of it located inland while two arms stretched toward coastal Democratic areas.
Now the district will essentially be erased, spread out across multiple districts.
Reps. Lois Frankel and Jared Moskowitz currently have adjoining districts covering swaths of Palm Beach and Broward counties. Both lean slightly Democratic.
The new map creates a more Democratic district anchored by West Palm Beach, mixing some of Frankel’s voters and those formerly represented by Cherfilus-McCormick. It divides Moskowitz’s current territory across three districts, a more difficult blow for his reelection prospects than Frankel would face.
Parkland, where Moskowitz lives, will be in a more Republican district that reaches across the state to Naples. One of the national Republicans’ top targets even before redistricting, Moskowitz has not said what district he will choose for a reelection bid.
Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, and Frederica Wilson currently represent neighboring districts to the south of Frankel’s and Moskowitz’s pairing.
Wasserman-Schultz has north Broward, including Weston, where she lives, along with Hollywood, Pembroke Pines and part of Miramar. Wilson, who lives in Miami Gardens, represents the second-most Democratic district on the outgoing map, with south Broward and parts of Miami-Dade.
Now, there will be just one concentrated Democratic district in Miami-Dade, with Wilson in position to stay in office there. Between that new Miami-Dade district and Frankel’s Palm Beach County base is a new heavily Democratic Broward district. Wasserman-Schultz does not live in that part of Broward. She will have to decide whether to run there or choose one of the new, more Republican districts that Moskowitz also is considering.
Wasserman-Schultz has called the redraw “a nakedly partisan scheme” that “breaks state law.”
In a possible bright spot for Democrats nationally, the south Florida changes did not substantially bolster Republican Reps. María Elvira Salazar, who lives in Coral Gables, or Carlos Giménez, another Miami-Dade lawmaker. Democrats plan to continue targeting them in this year's midterms.
