2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Florida

[EastAnglianLefty]

Florida is likely going to gain 2 seats after the census, although the latest county estimates suggest that 1 is also possible.

This is a first crack at drawing a Republican map for 29 districts:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/67445556-2f17-479d-9de1-d16950ea2dd6
https://davesredistricting.org/join/e44ca7ad-b9db-4475-b085-f25089b6a48d

(The first map is drawn with 2016 block groups, the second is a tracing of the same to try to get 2016 partisan data. Obviously the population distribution might be somewhat different by 2020, by not quite to a Texan extent, so it should still have some worth - if less so in central Florida.)

My first aim was incumbent protection - every current Republican keeps their hometown and current core of their district, except for those who have already announced they're retiring in 2020. My second aim was to flip FL-07 and to keep at least one Miami-area seat that's winnable for a Cuban Republican. My third aim was to distribute the Democratic packs such that there's an outside chance of one or two of them being competitive in a wave year.

North Florida sees minimal changes. FL-05 takes a bit more of Tallahassee and has to give up some of Jacksonville to compensate, but FL-04 is more than safe enough to take the hit. This FL-05 would have been white plurality by population in 2016, although that's probably no longer true now and the Democratic primary would still be black majority.

FL-07 is the first district to see significant changes. It loses its current portions of Orange County (including Murphy's home in Winter Park) and exchanges them for reliably Republican areas of western Orange County, plus New Smyrna Beach from Volusia County (DeLand would be a cleaner but slightly less Republican alternative.)

Realistically you have got to concede two Democratic sinks in the Orlando area, so both Demmings and Soto get given safe seats. The western exurbs of Orlando are then combined with The Villages to form the new FL-29, which is probably where Webster would choose to run. Trump won by over 20 points there.

FL-11 pushes south into Pasco County and would probably be won by a Republican based in Citrus or Hernando Counties. FL-13 and FL-14 both have to shrink a bit but don't change substantially and FL-12 steps in to grab lost territory, but remains safely Republican. Clinton won the new FL-13 by 3. More aggressive line-drawing could reduce this a bit, but it really depends how much of a hit Bilirakis is willing to take and if Republicans want to risk a court throwing out their lines.

There's not a great amount of change between Tampa/Orlando and the Miami conurbation, except that FL-18 is shored up a bit by adding Okeechobee County. And for the most part Palm Beach and Broward retain fairly similar lines to those they have currently, though FL-20 gets blacker and I made the lines between FL-21 and FL-22 uglier in order to make the lighter slightly less Democratic (but still a bit of a reach even under wave conditions.)

The biggest changes are in and around Miami-Dade. The effective new seat here is actually FL-25, which combines the areas it already has in Collier and Hendry Counties with Monroe County and outlying areas of Miami-Dade. That's a big enough of a Republican base for it to be able to absorb about 200,000 heavily Democratic voters on the western edge of Broward and still remain a 51-46 Trump-Clinton district. I drew it to be give Diaz-Balart a reasonably safe Republican district where he could plausibly win the primary, but as of 2016 whites outnumbered Hispanics 47-40 (and plenty of those Hispanics aren't Cuban) so that may not quite have succeeded.

The alternative refuge for him is the new FL-28, based on Hialeah and areas to the west of Miami proper. This is an area shooting leftward at a rate of knots on the presidentially (McCain won it 64-36, Trump won it 48.7-48.3) but that hasn't entirely followed through downballot so Diaz-Balart might be able to hold it down for a couple more cycles.

My FL-26 and FL-27 aren't shooting left at quite the same rate, but Clinton won both seats by nearly 30 points so I didn't see much point in drawing convoluted lines to make one more competitive than the other.

As of 2022, that probably breaks down as 17 Republicans, 9 Democrats and three swing seats (FL-13, FL-25 and FL-28, with the former leaning Democratic and the latter two Republican.) The current delegation is 14 Republicans to 13 Democrats, so even in the worst case scenario (all the swing seats go Democratic and Murphy holds on) that would still mean a 16-13 delegation, providing a net gain of 2 seats. If instead it broke 20-9, that's a net shift of 10 seats.

[EastAnglianLefty]

- The Second part of the redistricting amendment is that minority language or ethnic groups 'cannot be denied' the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. This provision is a loophole the the compact/competitive requirements. This language is more inclusive than federal VRA requirements, and makes minority districts part of law. This provision leads to more minority districts than would usually be required, protecting both plurality seats and coalition style seats. It's wording has been interpreted as two clear plurality/coalition districts are more valuable than one 50%+ seat - if the two can be easily drawn. These tenants did lead to 2010's FL05, so it is a tool for the GOP to abuse.

      - This minority requirements are also important to remember when one considers Miami-Dade and Cuban voters. Miami has a democratic geographic lean after 2016, and Cuban GOP voters now need reinforcements from elsewhere. One simply cannot make a >80% Hispanic district in west M-D even though it would be the best possible district by GOP vote. Fajitas across the swamp, similar to south Texas and the current FL-25, are therefore almost necessary. However, road connections are also mandated by Florida law and there are only two roads heading west - one in M-D and one in Broward.

Given that Miami-Dade's leftward movement is at least partly down to movement within the Cuban community, does this hold up? It's no longer so clear that the Cuban community votes as anything resembling a bloc, so are they protected in the same manner? Particularly since it's not clear that unpacking a >80% Hispanic district would allow it to elect 2 Republicans, given how difficult it is to connect multiple districts to the coast.

The road connection thing probably does make it particularly important to remove Miramar from FL-20, because if it remains included then it's harder to use I-75 for a Republican district to link the Miami area and the west coast.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Does Buchanan live in Sarasota? I'm not sure he'd mind the seat you've drawn him, but that's what Wikipedia puts as his residence.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I'm just thinking some more about your FL-15/FL-16 arrangement, and whilst it's certainly elegant, I'm wondering if it's necessary to concede two safely Dem seats in the area.

None of the surrounding seats are competitive and several of them are trending Republican, so wouldn't something like my arrangement be more electorally profitable for them, by swapping two safely Dem seats for one safe seat and one potentially competitive one?

If you wanted to be slightly more aggressive and if Bilirakis was willing to give up Palm Harbor, you could draw something like this:



That gives you a district that shouldn't fall foul of the Fair Districts Amendment, but which Clinton only won by one and which looks to be trending rightwards. If you then keep the non-Pinellas portions of my FL-12 identical, that still gives you a district that Trump won by 12, and trends around Tampa make that too close you can bolster the margin by swapping out the Pasco coast for slightly redder precincts further inland.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Yes, I figure if you're signing up to try and make FL-22 competitive, then you're probably willing to target FL-13 too - and St. Petersburg would seem like a better long-term prospect, because you don't need such a specific seat arrangement to put it in play as you do in Palm Beach/Broward.

The idea of sending the seat across the bay via I-275 hadn't occurred to me, but it's an interesting idea. It's worth noting that if you go by the 2016 estimates, Pinellas outside St. Petersburg is almost exactly the right size for a congressional district. That said, I'm not convinced that it's that much easier to drown out the city by doing that than it is if you just keep it on the peninsula.