TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Republicans passed a new congressional map this week, and Democrats said the changes could leave their party defending fewer competitive seats heading into the midterms. The GOP map uses the twin gerrymandering tools Republicans have described as “packing and cracking,” a structure Democrats warned is designed to reduce Democratic influence across district lines.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said the redistricting will reflect Florida’s population growth and political leanings. Democrats countered that the map is a power grab by President Donald Trump, who has urged Republicans to redraw maps across the country.
Under the new lines, analysts from both parties identified 24 districts that Trump won in 2024 by double digits. The AP analysis said that if Republicans win all of those districts, it would translate into a gain of four seats for the GOP, a prospect Democrats said they did not expect when they hoped Trump’s poll numbers would continue fading and create room to gain ground in Florida.
Legal challenges are expected even as candidates begin assessing where they may be positioned under the new boundaries. Democrats and their allies pointed to Florida’s state constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering, a restriction they said the map violates.
In Tampa Bay, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties—described as swing territory in recent presidential elections—were split in the current configuration between Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican, and Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat. Under the new map, the core metro area is divided into three districts, all of which tilt Republican, and Castor’s district would include more conservative rural areas, according to the AP analysis.
Castor called the new designs “blatantly illegal” because of Florida’s ban on partisan gerrymandering. She added, “No matter how new districts are drawn, I will keep fighting for Tampa Bay families,” while Democrats in Washington said they still could win the seat despite Republicans targeting Luna more aggressively in the lead-up to November.
In the Orlando region, the new map would also shift district lines in ways Democrats say diminish their ability to win. Democrats Darren Soto and Maxwell Frost currently have adjacent districts around Orlando, with Frost’s concentrated in the city and Soto’s extending into Kissimmee and across much of Osceola County. The new boundaries would turn the Orlando metro core into a single district that is all but guaranteed to go Democratic, while moving other parts of Orlando into a separate district that is more sprawling and more Republican.
Frost criticized the design for pairing city residents with voters living about a two-hour drive away. He said on social media that “That’s how hard DeSantis map-makers had to work to dilute the impact of voters in Orange County and make this district red.”
Soto, who is Puerto Rican and represents many Puerto Ricans, also attacked the governor on social media, writing: “DeSantis declared war against Florida’s 1.3M Puerto Ricans,” adding, “We are American citizens, our people served and died for this country, and we vote.”
South Florida also faced major boundary changes in the new map. The analysis said the map singles out a heavily Black 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 AP account said the district had originally been drawn to comply with Voting Rights Act provisions that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gutted on Wednesday, and that the new lines would spread what it described as the district’s core electorate across multiple districts instead of keeping it together.
In Palm Beach and Broward counties, the redraw would scramble incumbents’ districts. Reps. Lois Frankel and Jared Moskowitz currently have adjoining districts that both lean slightly Democratic, but the new map would create a more Democratic district anchored by West Palm Beach while dividing Moskowitz’s current territory across three districts. One result of the changes, the AP analysis said, is that Parkland—where Moskowitz lives—would land in a more Republican district that reaches across the state to Naples, and Moskowitz had not said what district he would choose for a reelection bid.
The southern Broward and Miami-Dade region also changes the math for Democrats. Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Frederica Wilson currently represent neighboring districts below Frankel’s and Moskowitz’s pairing. The AP analysis said Wasserman-Schultz’s district includes north Broward, while Wilson represents a district described as the second-most Democratic on the outgoing map that includes south Broward and parts of Miami-Dade. Under the new map, Democrats said the districts would be reorganized into one concentrated Democratic district in Miami-Dade for Wilson and a new heavily Democratic Broward district for Frankel, leaving Wasserman-Schultz without a district where she lives.
Wasserman-Schultz, the AP account said, would have to decide whether to run in the new areas or instead choose one of the more Republican districts that Moskowitz also is considering. She called the redraw “a nakedly partisan scheme” that “breaks state law.”
Even with the boundary changes that Democrats said threaten their seats elsewhere in the state, the AP analysis said 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 said they plan to continue targeting them in this year’s midterms.