The long saga of litigation over Florida’s congressional districts has drawn to an end (in state court, at least). On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision to implement the above congressional map to comply with the voter-initiated Fair Districts amendment, which banned drawing districts to favor a political party, among other things. Republican legislators flagrantly ignored this prohibition and their gerrymander was struck down at last, so now Democrats stand to gain following the plaintiff victory here.
While the Republican-controlled legislature passed some changes that rectified some of the gerrymandered districts, the two sides in this litigation were mainly squabbling over a handful of districts in South Florida. This ruling means that vulnerable freshman Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo's 26th District will not become redder as the legislature intended. Instead, this district will see Obama's margin of victory expand from 6 points to 11.5 percent. While Republicans in Miami-Dade County have a tendency to outperform Mitt Romney's numbers thanks in part to Cuban-American voters, that's still a tough hill for any Republican to climb these days, which means Curbelo will have a big target on his back next year.
Elsewhere in the state, the map will likely affect several other congressional incumbents. First-term Democratic Rep. Gwen Graham's 2nd District loses much of its Democratic base in Tallahassee and, with Romney carrying the revised version by over 30 points, it would be extremely difficult for her to win re-election there. (Graham hasn't announced her plans yet but could run for Senate instead, or wait until 2018 to run for governor.)
On the other hand, the Republican-held 13th District would have voted for Obama by 10.6 points now that the entirety of the city of St. Petersburg is included within its borders. That makes it a very strong pickup shot for Democrats, especially with former Gov. Charlie Crist running, since he’s very popular in this area and carried the district in all three of his statewide runs.
Another big prize for Democrats is Republican Rep. Dan Webster's 10th District in Orlando, which flips from a Romney seat to one that Obama carried by 22 percent. Webster himself has acknowledged this seat would be unwinnable, so instead, he's pursued a bizarre and unsuccessful campaign for House Speaker. As a result, the neighboring 9th District, which Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson is vacating to run for senate, drops down to just a 12.7 percent Obama margin of victory, but with the Democratic trend in Central Florida along with presidential turnout, Democrats should be favored to retain it.
No other districts change by a significant enough margin to affect the likely 2016 partisan outcome. Overall, we can expect Democrats to net two seats as a result of redistricting: There's a good chance they'll pick up FL-10, FL-13, and FL-26 while losing FL-02. If Democrats can hold on to the open 18th District (which is basically unaffected by this map), Florida's delegation would wind up with 15 Republican seats and 12 Democratic seats. That's still a big advantage for the GOP, considering Obama carried the state twice, but it's definitely an improvement.
You can find the court's decision here, along with the 2012 presidential results calculated by Matthew Isbell for districts 1-19 here and districts 20-27 here, under "Coalition's First Map." A detailed version of the map itself is available here, under the header "Coalition Plaintiffs Proposed Congressional Map (CP-1)."
