{"id":250289,"date":"2026-04-28T22:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/250289\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T22:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:36:09","slug":"northeast-florida-congressional-districts-remain-relatively-unchanged-in-governors-new-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/250289\/","title":{"rendered":"Northeast Florida congressional districts remain relatively unchanged in governor’s new map"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida legislature has begun discussing a new map submitted by Gov. Ron DeSantis during a special session on redistricting.<\/p>\n

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida lawmakers are back in Tallahassee for a special session on redistricting. Gov. Ron DeSantis has tasked the legislature with approving a new congressional district map<\/a> released by his office on April 27, the day before the special session began.<\/p>\n

The special session is part of the governor’s push to redraw Florida\u2019s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

But why is this a priority for the governor right now? First Coast News Political Analyst John Daigle, of Daigle Creative, said Florida is joining a handful of states listening to a request from the president.<\/p>\n

“Last year, President Trump, fearing he was going to lose the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, it started with him asking Texas to do a midterm redistricting, which is rare. Texas did. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the new maps that Texas drew,” Daigle explained.<\/p>\n

Usually, states redraw districts every 10 years based on new census data. The current map was approved in 2022.<\/p>\n

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The new map submitted by DeSantis’ office shows Northeast Florida relatively untouched.<\/p>\n

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“The main seats we have up here, which are currently held by Congressmen Rutherford and Bean, those seats are not changed dramatically under the new map. They both have competitive races coming up in the midterm, but even if we adopted these new maps, neither one of them really faces a significantly changed geographic area for their district,” Daigle said.<\/p>\n

The biggest changes to the map are in the districts in central and southern Florida. The governor\u2019s office also shared a color-coded version of the new map: the red districts represent Republican and the blue represent Democratic.<\/p>\n

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While most of the districts are red, Daigle said the new map could still hurt the republican party by diluting those districts with more democratic voters, which could wear down the republican strongholds.<\/p>\n

Daigle added one of the biggest issues with the new map is how it could end up hurting the moderate and independent voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat keeps happening is they keep gerrymandering these seats and making them more and more red or more and more blue, making it so that moderates and nobody but the most extreme candidates can win those partisan primaries. That’s a big reason why our politics today are so divided and so divisive because moderates and candidates anywhere near the middle can’t survive primaries,” Daigle said.<\/p>\n

The special session is slated to end Friday, although lawmakers could vote on the maps as soon as Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Daigle also pointed out that Florida voters approved the Fair Districts Amendment in 2010, which made it illegal to draw districts based on political parties. If the legislature approves the new map, Daigle said it could still face legal challenges that could impact its chances of being adopted before the midterms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida legislature has begun discussing a new map submitted by Gov. Ron DeSantis during a special session…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-250289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}