DeSantis’ New Redistricting Gambit May Spectacularly Backfire On GOP, Data Shows

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ newly proposed redistricting plan aims to net the GOP four seats, but it could backfire if Democrats repeat their recent Sunshine State success in November.

The governor on Monday unveiled a map that would redraw four of the eight Democratic-held House seats in Florida as seats that President Donald Trump carried by at least nine percentage points in the 2024 presidential election. The fact that the once left-for-dead Florida Democrats just picked up a state legislative seat Trump won by double digits, combined with a map that makes many Republican-held seats less safe, could potentially flip an intended four-seat GOP pickup on its head. (RELATED: Florida Rolls Out Congressional Map That Could Erase Virginia Dems’ Gerrymander Advantage)

The Florida State House passed the map by an 83-28 vote Wednesday, the Florida Phoenix reported. The State Senate has indicated it will vote on the map later in the day.

DeSantis rolled out his map just six days after Virginia voters approved a lopsided Democratic gerrymander that will likely result in four seats flipping from red to blue, leaving only one of the state’s 11 seats in the Republican column. The Florida’s governor’s attempt to cancel out the widely-criticized Virginia map is just the latest entrant in an mid-decade redistricting war between both parties that began with Texas’ new map  hat hoped flip five seats red and continued with California’s voter-backed gerrymander that is set to place five Republican seats in the Democratic column.

Unlike the Virginia map that includes several oddly shaped districts, including one many observers say resemble a lobster, the newly proposed Florida map is arguably more compact than the map it is replacing — as it does away with one South Florida seat’s claw-shaped lines.

The pending Florida map specifically targets Democratic Reps. Darren Soto, Kathy Castor, Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz who have served in the House since 2017, 2007, 2023 and 2005 respectively.

DeSantis’ office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has released a draft congressional map ahead of the state’s special redistricting session.

Compared to the current map (left), the new map (right) would eliminate as many as 4 Democratic representatives – 2 in central Florida and 2 in south Florida. pic.twitter.com/rdVKUGQi7M

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) April 27, 2026

Soto’s Central Florida-based Ninth district would transform from a seat former Vice President Kamala Harris won by four points in 2024 to one that Trump carried by 18, according to data from Dave’s Redistricting App. Castor, who currently represents a Tampa-based seat Harris carried by eight points would shift into a seat Trump won by 11.

Moskowitz and Wasserman Schultz, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, will both see their respective districts’ redrawn as seats Trump won in 2024.

Indeed, DeSantis’ new map leaves only four seats Harris won: one in the Orlando area and three in blue-heavy South Florida. Six more seats in the proposed map voted for Trump by margins between nine and 13 points — the margin by which he won Florida’s statewide vote by — in 2024.

While the map on the surface hands Republicans 24 out of 28 of the Sunshine State’s seats, the GOP might be underestimating Florida Democrats’ resurgence.

Democratic Florida State Rep. Emily Gregory won a March 24 special election over a Trump-backed opponent in a Palm Beach County-based seat. The president won the district, which notably includes his Mar-a-Lago residence, by 11 points in 2024. Gregory defeated her Republican rival by just over two percentage points, representing a 13-point swing from the presidential race.

If the trends represented by this special election hold, Democrats would actually pick up seats under Republicans’ new map.

Data for the new Florida map has been uploaded to Dave’s Redistricting Act.

Under the new map, the 9th, 14th, 22nd, and 25th districts would go from Harris seats to Trump seats, all of them carried by around 10 points.https://t.co/Dx9MBBx6Q8 pic.twitter.com/HroEwfLdnh

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) April 27, 2026

Assuming DeSantis’ map passes the legislature and is used for November’s elections, Democrats would net ten House seats if they performed as well as Gregory — a net gain of two from the eight they won in 2024.

In this hypothetical scenario, the seats Democrats win include the Seventh district — currently held by scandal-plagued Republican Rep. Cory Mills — and the 13th district, represented by firebrand Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. While Mills’ seat retains the same partisan composition and Luna’s becomes one point more Trump-friendly under the new map, the governor’s aggressive decision to target incumbent Democrats over shoring up his fellow Republicans could cost them their jobs.

Democrats could pick up a seat in Jacksonville, hold Castor’s seat and keep the two South Florida seats that were radically redrawn to doom Democratic incumbents.

However, Gregory’s strong performance in traditionally red territory might not even represent the Democrats’ midterm ceiling, as seen through other special elections throughout the country.

For example, Democratic Texas State Sen. Taylor Rehmet in January flipped a seat Trump had carried by 17 points, besting his Republican opponent in a 14-point landslide — representing a whopping 31-point swing.

If Democrats manage to flip every House district Trump won by 17 points and less in Florida, they would win 17 of Florida’s  28 seats under the new map. Under the old map, this performance would have given Democrats one less seat.

DeSantis’ aggressive map also may be a sign that Republicans may be taking the party’s recent gains among Hispanic voters for granted, especially in South Florida. Special elections show Hispanics may already be shifting back to the Democratic camp en masse.

While Trump won 24 of the new map’s 28 seats in 2024, he only won 22 in 2020 and 19 in 2016. Notably, all five of the seats he won in 2024 but not in 2016 were in South Florida and three of the five are majority Hispanic.

Democrats are notably making a play for one of these seats in particular: the heavily Hispanic Miami-based 27th district, currently held by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a moderate Republican known for breaking with much of her party on immigration. Eliott Rodriguez, a former CBS Miami news anchor, is one of the Democrats vying to take on the incumbent, also a former news anchor and Cuban-American, in November.

The seat backed Trump by 15 points under both the old and newly proposed maps. The nonpartisan Cook Political report currently rates the race in Salazar’s district as “Likely Republican,” the same rating it also gives to Mills’ and Luna’s reelection bids.

However, in the 2020 presidential election, Trump only won the 27th district by just 0.2%, according to DRA—meaning voters in the Hispanic-majority seat had shifted 15 points to the right in four years. Failed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won this seat by nearly 18 points in 2016, showing it trended over 30 points toward the GOP in just two presidential election cycles.

Republican strategist and former Trump White House official Mike McKenna told the DCNF that aggressively redrawing lines could potentially backfire on Republicans in Florida, while also arguing that new gerrymanders could unintentionally pose a problem for the GOP in Texas and Democrats in Virginia by placing incumbents in weaker districts.

Texas is another state where Republicans appeared to bet on Hispanic voters, who shifted from blue to red in large numbers from 2020 to 2024. A large portion of these shifts occurred in the Rio Grande Valley by the Mexican border where Republicans drew two seats that Trump won by low double digits.

“It’s [Redistricting is] a potential problem in Texas (in the Rio Grande Valley). It’s a potential problem in Florida. It’s a potential problem for the Democrats in Virginia,” McKenna said. “No one really knows who is going to shore up to vote in these new districts. Nor does anyone know what scrambling the lines this to an election will do to name ID for incumbents.”

“But the time to think about these potential second order consequences was prior to launch, and, as we all know, folks in dc don’t do second order thinking all that well,” he added.

Other observers had harsher words.

Publisher of news website Florida Politics Peter Schorsch called the Republican map’s elimination of Castor’s Democrat-dominated Tampa-anchored seat “certifiably insane.”

He noted that the Tampa Bay region is “purple-as-a-plum Tampa Bay,” adding that the aggressive map “will backfire.”

Certifiably insane to eliminate Democrat representation out of purple-as-a-plum Tampa Bay.

This will backfire. https://t.co/nnxszxtPIT pic.twitter.com/D2VAiJUnPN

— Peter Schorsch (@PeterSchorschFL) April 27, 2026

Soto, the Democrat arguably most endangered by the new map, asked on Facebook if the redistricting plan was a “Gerrymander or Dummymander?”

“This map is an absolutely unlawful violation of the Florida Constitution,” the five-term Orlando-area congressman wrote in his social media post. “The Legislature should reject it. The courts should strike it down.”

“That being said, there are 12+ seats that Democrats could still win under this map in this cycle,” he emphasized.

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