Democrats Flip Three Florida Seats Republicans Redrew to Favor the GOP

Democrats have taken three of the four Florida congressional seats that Republicans redrew in their own favor this year, and they are narrowly ahead in the last one. Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz are projected to win the 14th, 22nd and 25th districts, according to The Guardian. Darren Soto is leading in the ninth.

The map was the work of Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled state legislature, who reshaped Florida's districts earlier this year specifically to create four new GOP-friendly seats. The plan looked airtight on paper: had those lines existed in 2024, Donald Trump would have carried all but one of them by double digits, and the final district by roughly nine points.

Tuesday night blew that math up. The Florida wins landed as part of a remarkably strong evening for Democrats in a state Trump won easily in 2024 and twice before, and where DeSantis once cruised to victory by nearly 20 points. Florida, the state Barack Obama won twice, had been written off by many Democrats as a lost cause.

The down-ballot picture was just as tight. Incumbent senator Ashley Moody edged Democratic challenger Angie Nixon by a narrow margin, and Republican Byron Donalds barely survived a gubernatorial race that few observers initially thought would be competitive.

Florida was one piece of a national push by Trump and his allies to redraw districts in their favor, with Republicans in Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and North Carolina among those who redrew maps. Some of the new districts in Texas and North Carolina also looked winnable for Democrats.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an election law professor at Harvard, warned against reading too much into the results. Writing on X, he said gerrymandering is not delivering the gains the GOP hoped for — but only in a blue-wave environment. In a neutral year, he added, Republicans would be netting around nine seats, and their new maps would still outperform their old ones.