Summary
Florida Republicans passed a new congressional map this week, setting up a fight over whether the district lines cross Florida’s constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering and over how the changes could reshape the midterm House races. Democrats, who had hoped 2026 could be a chance to gain ground as President Donald Trump’s poll numbers faded, now face the prospect of losing up to four U.S. House seats because of the new boundaries, according to analysts from both parties.
The changes, DeSantis said, are designed to reflect population growth and Florida’s political leanings. Democrats countered that the redraw is a power grab aligned with Trump’s push for Republicans to redraw maps across the country, and they said the new districts rely on “packing and cracking,” the main tools associated with partisan gerrymandering.
The map makes statewide alterations that, in analysts’ assessment, increase the number of districts where Republicans could have strong advantages. Under the new lines, analysts from both parties said there are 24 districts where Trump won in 2024 by double digits, and Republicans winning all of those seats would be a gain of four seats. Legal challenges are expected to follow even as candidates begin thinking about what the lines mean for the next election.
In the Tampa Bay area, Republicans drew district lines that split a core metro area currently divided between Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Rep. Kathy Castor. Under the new map, the area would be split into three districts that tilt Republican, with Castor’s seat including more conservative rural areas than it does now. Castor criticized the design as “blatantly illegal” because of Florida’s constitutional ban and said, “No matter how new districts are drawn, I will keep fighting for Tampa Bay families.”
In Central Florida, Democrats said the redraw changes how Orlando’s voters and surrounding communities are grouped. The current Orlando-area districts held by Darren Soto and Maxwell Frost would be altered so that the Orlando metro core becomes a single district that is all but guaranteed to go Democratic, while other parts of Orlando are folded into a separate district that is more sprawling and more Republican. Frost criticized the pairing of city residents with voters living about a two-hour drive away, and Soto also attacked DeSantis over what he described as treatment of Puerto Rican voters.
In South Florida, the new map also targets a district Democrats described as having been drawn to comply with Voting Rights Act provisions later affected by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The new lines single out a heavily Black south Florida district previously represented by Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who resigned during a House ethics inquiry into her use of campaign funds. DeSantis called it an egregious race-based gerrymander, and the new map, Democrats said, would “essentially” erase that seat by spreading it across multiple districts.
In Palm Beach and Broward counties, the map scrambles adjoining seats held by Reps. Lois Frankel and Jared Moskowitz. The new map creates a more Democratic district anchored by West Palm Beach that mixes some of Frankel’s voters with those formerly represented by Cherfilus-McCormick, while Moskowitz’s current territory would be divided across three districts. The change would likely be harder for Moskowitz’s reelection prospects than it would be for Frankel, with Parkland—where Moskowitz lives—put into a more Republican district that reaches across the state to Naples.
Farther south, the map changes how Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Frederica Wilson are situated. Wasserman-Schultz currently has north Broward, including Weston, and Wilson represents south Broward and parts of Miami-Dade. Under the new map, Democrats said there would be just one concentrated Democratic district in Miami-Dade that would keep Wilson in office there, while a new heavily Democratic Broward district would form between that Miami-Dade district and Frankel’s Palm Beach County base. Wasserman-Schultz would then have to decide whether to run in the Broward district or in one of the new, more Republican districts that Moskowitz is also considering, and she called the redraw “a nakedly partisan scheme” that “breaks state law.”
Democrats said the south Florida changes do not substantially bolster several Republican incumbents, including Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez. National Democrats plan to continue targeting those members in this year’s midterms, even as Florida Democrats weigh the political implications of how the new map splits and consolidates existing constituencies.
Separately, the legal and political repercussions of redistricting decisions are playing out across the country as more states prepare new lines and courts prepare to consider challenges—continuing a broader pattern discussed in prior MSI coverage about GOP seat gains and mid-decade redraws. For Florida, the central question is whether the new boundaries will survive litigation and how quickly candidates can adapt to districts drawn with the “packing and cracking” logic Democrats describe.