Florida Republicans controlled the entire redistricting process in the state and drew a gerrymander designed to give them 19 of the state's 27 seats, but thanks to regional trends in one and a poor candidate in another, they won just 17 to Dem's 10. Here I wanted to see just how much damage Democrats could have done had they controlled the entire process and entirely ignored the state's Fair District Amendment while following the VRA. I've attempted to make every seat designed for Democrats safe in nearly all normal circumstances while also maximizing our theoretical seat share and protecting every one of our 6 2011 incumbents as the state Dem party surely would have done.
So starting off in the north, the 2nd is made safely Democratic with the addition of Gainesville. Obama underperformed massively here so despite it just being D+2 federally, Southerland would lose easily even to a liberal Dem. The 5th retains the blacker parts of Gainesville and should be safe for Corrine Brown in both the primary and general.
Moving on to the Orlando area, I've unpacked Grayson's district a little which allowed me to turn both of Webster's and Mica's districts into safe Dem seats that are also trending our way, giving us two more pick ups.
In Tampa I've shredded Bill Young's district to the point where he'd either retire (most likely) or run in the 12th, which allows us to easily flip his seat. The 12th is kept within reach in a wave year election but even then it would be tough, but it's the only one of the Republicans' 11 that is remotely competitive. Finally, since I didn't have to put St. Petersburg in the 13th or 14th to make them safe, I was able to put it in the snake like 16th to make it safe as well, though Buchanan would lose even a swing district. That brings us to plus two for the region.
Finally, in southeast Florida I've significantly shored up Murphy's district by unpacking Hastings. He still gets a district with a strong base of black support in Ft. Lauderdale and should be fine in the primary which would be way over majority black. With the Hispanic VRA districts, I made sure to keep all of them over 70% VAP and basically had Garcia and Diaz-Balart switch districts. Given how dramatically this region swung and trended Dem in 2012, the 25th would easily elect Garcia and continue to do so. The last pick up is the 27th, where Ileana Ros-Lehtinen gets a district over 10% bluer which she'd easily lose as it would have been over D+10 last year.
As you can see, switching from a Republican to a Democratic gerrymander produces a dramatic change in the map and allows us to flip 6 more districts and make a total of 8 more safe for us than under the actual map.