Florida redistricting: How much will maps help Republicans?

Florida’s Republicans controlled the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the Legislature going into the once-a-decade redistricting process this year.

That presented an opportunity to draw seats that would further entrench GOP power in Tallahassee and Washington.

At all levels, Republicans already had an advantage in seats compared to total votes. Donald Trump won 52% of the statewide vote in 2020, but won 56% of congressional districts, 58% of Florida’s Senate districts and 59% of Florida’s House districts. In each body, the share of actual representatives who are Republican is even higher.

In both Congress and the state Senate, they will likely improve their standing even more.

How to read these charts: Each district in the map is rated by how its residents voted in the 2020 presidential election, from deep blue districts where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 10 points or more, to solid red districts where the opposite happened:

Sort all the districts from most-Democratic to most-Republican, and we can see which party is likely to claim a majority of seats in its delegation in the future.

U.S. Congress

Florida’s new congressional map is Republicans’ best chance at redistricting their way to more representation.

Population growth led to Florida gaining one additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and under GOP leadership, the map will likely become much redder. The plan drawn by DeSantis features 20 districts that voted for Trump, compared to eight that voted for Biden. (The breakdown on the old map was 15-12 for Trump.) Under the new plan, North Florida and Tampa Bay each lose a Biden district.

Eighteen of the 20 new Trump districts voted for him by a five percentage-point margin or higher.

Florida Senate

The state Senate’s map shores up a GOP majority, with 22 solid-red seats in the 40-person chamber. The number of overall Trump districts drops by one, but four seats in the new map would have been decided by a margin of five points or less.

Florida House of Representatives

A whopping 71 of 120 districts in the previous Florida House map voted for Trump over Biden in 2020. Under the new map, that remains essentially the same (dropping to 70), and the body’s overall composition changes little.