Once DRA had Florida data, I knew I had to give the state a try. After a few different versions and tweaking, I came up with this shameless gerrymander, which ignores the new Florida Ballot Initiative entirely. There are a total of 13 rock-solid Democratic seats, and 11 rock-solid Republican seats. None of the safe Democratic seats have PVIs below D+5 (my personal cutoff) and none of the Republican seats below R+8. Two swing seats remained, one based near Orlando, and one near Tampa. In both cases, the existence of two strong Democratic seats right next door meant that I’d be robbing from Peter to pay Paul. I ultimately decided having two safe and one swing was in both cases the better bet.
And away we go!
FL-1 (R+21)
By virtue of being in the extreme west of the Panhandle, this district is essentially the same as the current one. It is also the most conservative in the state by a hair, despite Pensacola having some Democratic precincts in it (Northern Florida’s Republican areas are much, much more Republican than the state as a whole)
FL-2 (R+20)
This district is more or less the rural portions of the remainder of the Panhandle, plus a little bit of the northern Gulf Coast which is pretty similar politically. It’s the largest district in the state, and one of the most conservative.
FL-3 (D+7)
The first Democratic district is built on the bookends of Tallahassee and Gainesville, while sweeping in a few rural black areas, and a few somewhat less conservative areas than average for Northern Florida to link the two. The result should be a very safe Democratic district.
FL-4 (R+21)
This district is essentially the more conservative parts of Jacksonville, along with the adjoining exurban counties. It’s almost as conservative as FL-1 again showing how much more right-wing non-urban areas are in North Florida.
FL-5 (D+7)
Jacksonville alone is not Democratic enough to build a safe district. So instead, this district swept south along the coast, taking in parts of Saint Augustine, Daytona Beach, Port Orange, and Palatka,
FL-6 (R+15)
This is a leftovers district, cooping in Republican areas in North Central Florida, a bit of Jacksonville which would be awkward to scoop into FL-4, and some of the Orlando suburbs.
FL-7 (R+11)
I don’t know enough about Florida to describe this rural district north of the Tampa Bay area. It is another effective Republican vote sink however.
FL-8 (R+11)
The main base of population in this district are the suburbs and exurbs to the northwest of Tampa, although some other areas are included further to the North, including some of Orange County.
FL-9 (EVEN)
This is one of the two swing districts on the map. There were just not quite enough Democrats in the Orlando area to create three solid Democratic seats, even after snagging some good precincts from the Atlantic coast. With some tweaks, this district could have been improved to D+3, with the other two Democratic districts remaining safe, but I decided to leave well enough alone not to dilute minority voting power any further just to make a swing seat slightly less swingy.
FL-10 (D+7)
One of the two safe Democratic Orlando-based districts. It is majority minority and captures most of the Black neighborhoods to the west of downtown.
FL-11 (D+6)
This compact Democratic district is majority-minority and has a high Latino percentage (39%). It was very close to plurality Latino in my original drawings, but turning FL-9 into a swing district meant taking in some white, Republican leaning areas in Seminole County.
FL-12 (R+11)
Another Republican leftovers district. This district has a few purposes. One, it absorbs Republican parts of Orlando and Seminole County which needed to go somewhere. Second, it draws in most of right wing Brevard and Indian River.
FL-13 (D+2)
Although less extreme, the story here is similar to FL-9. Tampa Bay doesn’t quite have enough Democrats for three districts (even with a finger heading south). So instead I drew two solid districts and one swingy, but Democratic-leaning district. I could have taken about a point of PVI off of FL-14, but decided against.
FL-14 (D+6)
This solid district is based around Saint Petersburg, but sends an arm into Tampa in order to snag a few more black voters.
FL-15 (D+5)
This district is a bit of a hybrid, taking in Democratic areas around Tampa Bay, but then sending an arm down to take Democratic votes out of Bradenton and Sarasota.
FL-16 (R+8)
A Republican Gulf Coast district. The PVI is the lowest for any of my designated Republican seats. I have to say I’m a bit let down with this, but outside of Port Charlotte there aren’t really any strongly Democratic precincts left to swipe - it’s just the district as a whole is only moderately Republican.
FL-17 (R+12)
The bulk of the territory of this district is rural South Central Florida, although more of the population is probably along the perimeter. Still, I think it’s fairly good in terms of a community of interest.
FL-18 (R+13)
Centered on parts of Lee (including Cape Coral, but not Fort Meyers) and Collier counties, this is one of the least gerrymandered Republican districts.
Now we get to the fun part. It’s all Democrats (save one) from here on out.
FL-19 (D+6)
Most of the population of this district is in Palm Beach county, although the district takes in some of Martin, Saint Lucie, and Indian River as well.
FL-20 (D+8)
This district takes in mostly the interior of Palm Beach county, but swings west to take in Hendry (which isn’t as right wing as the rest of South Central Florida), finally ending with the black neighborhoods in Fort Meyers.
FL-21 (D+6)
This district is almost compact, taking in coastal Martin and Palm Beach. However, in order to make it safe for Democrats, a leg of it goes into Broward county to snag some black precincts.
FL-22 (D+10)
The center of population for this district is mainly north Broward, around Coral Springs. However, it takes in some areas in the interior further south, even sweeping up a bit of more exurban Miami-Dade. It is majority-minority, with 43% of the population white, and 32% of the population Latino.
FL-23 (D+9)
This is a nice, fairly compact district solely in Broward County, taking in the entire coastal region, as well a large segment of the southern interior. Another solid seat for the Democrats.
FL-24 (D+33)
At 50.9% black VAP, this is the sole majority-black district in Florida. It’s not very different at all from FL-17, for obvious reasons. It does take in a bit of the Coast which isn’t black at all just to round out its population.
FL-25 (D+5)
This district is 68% Latino AND 59% Obama. How did I do it? A few ways. First, it stitched together the less right-wing Latino suburbs to the southwest and northwest of the city. Second, it took in a portion of Broward which still had a fairly high Latino population, but which was heavily Democratic. Finally, I put all the right-wing Latino areas somewhere else.
FL-26 (R+19)
Right-wing Cubans are found in two main zones of the Miami metro area – directly to the West, and to the north-northwest of the city. This district sweeps in as many of them as possible. It’s also an eye-popping 90% Latino.
FL-27 (D+6)
This is a solidly Democratic district, along with being 54% Latino. The latino percentage is so low because someone needed to sweep up the black and white voters found to the East and Southwest of Miami.
Some random notes:
VRA Concerns:
Although this map keeps three Latino seats in Miami-Dade, it could be viewed as a racial gerrymander. FL-25 is probably kosher, but FL-26 could be seen as an illegal concentration, while FL-27 could be seen as a dilution. I don’t see any way around this without ceding a seat to the Republicans. Still, even on a totally VRA-compliant map, it shouldn’t be difficult to draw one Democratic, Latino district in the region.
Further Improvements:
As I said, my EVEN and D+2 district could both have been made D+3 pretty easily, but I couldn’t hit the safe D+5 unless I did major re-jiggering. There’s also a lot of wasted Democratic PVI left in the districts based in Broward and Palm Beach. It would likely be possible to redraw the map so as to eliminate one further Republican district - probably around Fort Meyers - and keep every Democratic district at or above the safety zone. This would totally wreak havoc with communities of interest however.