Q&A – How Many Additional GOP Seats Could Florida Redistricting Net?
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Today’s entry: Hi Brian, my question for you is about redistricting. Last week you reported that Governor DeSantis was considering redistricting before next year’s elections. The reports about the Texas redistricting plan suggests Republicans could gain perhaps five additional seats through redistricting. How many additional seats could Republicans potentially gain in Florida?
Bottom Line: Governor DeSantis’s recent announcement, that he’s considering a congressional redistricting plan, is on the back of the effort in Texas but also following the recent ruling by Florida’s Supreme Court allowing the current map to remain in place.
The legal win by the DeSantis administration not only cleared the path a new redistricting process to take place, but also with stronger legal footing to make potentially aggressive changes to Florida’s congressional districts which could impact minority majority communities. It was on that note that DeSantis said this: There’s a lot of people who believe that the Fair District Amendments is unconstitutional, because what it does is, it mandates having race predominate. Whereas, neutrality should really be the constitutional standard. What DeSantis is referring to is racial gerrymandering that has historically been implicit within the redistricting process in Florida.
If you’ve ever looked at Florida’s congressional districts and wondered why in the world some of them are configured the way they are, it often has had to do with attempting to achieve a certain number of “majority minority” districts. In 2010 Florida passed two constitutional amendments called the “Fair Districts” Amendments. Questionable language included this: Districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice. That subjective language is said by critics to unduly favor minority groups, has resulted in gerrymandered districts, and was recently found in the former Al Lawson District in North Florida, to have violated the law according to Florida’s Supreme Court.
Having been seemingly liberated of the racial gerrymandering that has impacted redistricting decisions in Florida, and with Florida having added over 2.1 million citizens since the 2020 Census, DeSantis sees the opportunity to significantly redraw districts and likely in benefit of creating more GOP leaning seats. That takes us to the crux of today’s question.
Florida currently has 28 congressional seats in the U.S. House. The current political makeup of Florida’s delegation is 20 Republicans and 8 Democrats. Attempting to discern how many seats might lean towards Republicans without a newly proposed map having been produced, is extremely speculative to say the least. With that said, a lot has changed not just with Florida’s population but also the political demographic shift since the previous Census.
Miami Dade’s emergence as the latest Republican majority county, in addition to Palm Beach County’s consistent trend towards the right has produced additional opportunities to reshape the map throughout South Florida in way that likely could create two GOP leaning seats in South Florida.
Florida’s 23rd House District, currently represented by Jared Moskowitz was won by fewer than five points last year. The 22nd District seat represented by Lois Frankel, was won by 10% last year. Subtle map shifts may be possible to swing those two districts towards the right. With Hillsborough County having also recently flipped to a GOP majority, it may also be possible to maneuver one more GOP leaning seat out of the central part of the state with the current seat held by Darren Soto perhaps being the most vulnerable.
So, the bottom line is that redistricting could rather easily create at least one more GOP leaning congressional seat within Florida, with as many as three being a possibility. It’ll be interesting to see what happens from here. In order to put this into place in time for next year’s midterm elections, Governor DeSantis would likely need to call a special session. Given the tension he’s had with Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, it’s not necessarily a given that the legislature would go along with a newly drawn map by DeSantis. However, should we arrive at that place it’s likely President Trump would weigh in on the impact within his home state and for that matter a seat that could potentially flip in his home district.