FL districts: Voting Rights Act helps Republicans

Published May 1, 2012 4:00am ET



Roll Call reports that a Florida court has upheld the congressional redistricticting plan passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature against a Democratic challenge. That’s good news for Republicans. They current hold a 19-6 edge in the Florida delegation. Florida gained two seats in the reapportionment following the 2010 Census, and Democrats had hoped that they might reap significant gains. They still may: the Republican plan in effect for the elections between 2002 and 2010 made things awfully tough for Democrats, and they currently hold only three black-majority seats (anchored in Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Miami), two heavily Jewish seats (Broward and Palm Beach Counties) and one seat with large black and Hispanic minorities (anchored in Tampa). In looking over the new boundaries, I estimate that the new districts could produce a delegation which is anywhere from 20-7 Republican to 17-10 Republican. The former would produce one new seat for each party, the latter would produce a two-seat loss for Republicans and a four-seat gain for Democrats. But it would require a shift back to a 2006-08 balance between the two parties and away from the balance that prevailed in 2002-2004 and 2010, for which we have no polling evidence in this election cycle.

 

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