WASHINGTON — Florida is likely to become the next battleground in the nationwide redistricting wars after Virginia voters narrowly approved a gerrymander Tuesday that could net Democrats up to four House seats in November.
Key GOP operatives and other conservative figures demanded that Sunshine State Republicans squeeze out additional redistricting advantages in order to neutralize Democrats’ dramatic gains in the commonwealth.
“It’s time to respond to what we saw tonight in Virginia with a redistricting plan that reflects Florida’s true partisan lean—and adds 3–4 GOP seats to our supermajority,” former White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields, a Florida native, declared on X.
“Virginia is a purple state being drawn as deep blue. Florida should draw a map that’s even redder.”
Florida currently has 20 Republican-held House seats and seven Democratic-held seats, with one vacancy following the Tuesday resignation of Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), who repped the deep-blue 20th District.
In other words, Republicans control 71% of the House seats in a state President Trump won with 56% of the vote in 2024.
Virginia’s new map could hand Democrats 91% of House seats in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won with under 52% of the vote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered the convention of a special legislative session next week to consider new congressional maps.
Democrats have already threatened to challenge any changes, citing the state’s so-called Fair Districts Amendments approved by voters in 2010. Those amendments bar redrawing districts to “favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.”
Election analysts have also warned that drawing a map meant to maximize Republican seats requires diluting GOP strength in certain districts, leaving them vulnerable to the types of “blue wave” midterm elections seen in 2006 and 2018.
“The political environment has acted as a bulwark against maximal Republican maps, because there are plenty of Republicans in safe seats today that don’t want their majorities to be diluted with Democratic voters they’d absorb,” the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman told The Post.
“So that makes things tricky for Florida Republicans.”
“If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump’s dummymander in Texas,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) warned this week.
“Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
Typically, redistricting takes place after the census is conducted each decade. But a rare mid-decade redistricting arms race broke out after Trump pushed red states to reconfigure their congressional boundaries.
Following the Virginia referendum, Democrats will likely have a net advantage of two to four districts redrawn in their favor, per an analysis from Zenith Research Founding Partner Adam Carlson.
“I’d say prior to Virginia, the outlook was a wash from new maps,” agreed Wasserman, adding that Tuesday’s outcome had given Democrats an advantage in the redistricting battle.
Following Tuesday’s closer-than-expected result, several conservative commentators raged against prominent Republican organizations for not spending more on the ballot measure.
“Just so you get the truth and not the partisan spin here, Republicans came up with the idea of the mid-decade redistricting fight and started in Texas. Then, in Virginia, the RNC spent $0.00 to fight,” radio host Erick Erickson grumbled.
“Every Republican committee has raised more cash than its respective Democrat committee,” columnist Dustin Grage raged. “We’re talking about hundreds of millions more in total. Yet we were outspent in Virginia? Decline is a choice.”
Other observers questioned the effect widespread Republican spending would have had on the outcome.
“The last thing Virginia Republicans needed was for the news media to be printing headlines about national Republicans swooping in to help Rs defeat the referendum,” one X user summed up. “The best chance ‘no’ had was keeping the race hyper-local. IMO, the current result is the best they could hope for given the political environment dynamics.”