On a strong night for Democrats, President Trump’s party suffered a setback as a Republican bid to tip Florida’s House map suffered a setback.
Published November 4, 2026
Democrats won several seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that were redrawn in favor of Republicans by the Republican-led Florida Legislature in redistricting efforts.
In an overwhelming result that reflects Democrats’ broad midterm election victories, Kathy Castor won Florida’s 14th Congressional District, giving Democrats a nearly 16 percentage point lead over the 2024 presidential vote.
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First-time Democratic candidate Pia Dandiya won the 22nd District, and Jared Moskowitz retained his 25th District.
Notably, the race between incumbent Darren Soto and Republican challenger Dan Green in Florida’s 9th Congressional District remains the closest of the four races, with Soto holding a narrow lead as the final votes were counted Wednesday.
The victory adds to a wave of Democratic victories across the country in an election widely cast as a referendum on President Donald Trump. Democrats gained a majority in both houses of Congress, including at least 54 seats in the Senate, but it is a major setback for President Trump and could significantly determine his power in the final two years of his term.
Florida’s resurgence provides another measure of the electoral headwinds facing Republicans this election cycle, despite tilting the district map in their favor to tip some seats toward Republicans.
In April, outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a longtime ally of President Trump, and the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature tried to redraw Florida’s congressional map to give his party a better chance of retaining a majority in the House.
The move was part of an unprecedented national Republican effort to secure structural advantages ahead of the midterm elections by reshaping congressional representation.
The boundary changes would give Trump a lead in four Democratic-held districts (9th, 14th, 22nd, and 25th) and were clearly designed to shrink the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Under the new maps signed by Mr. DeSantis in May, Mr. Trump would have won three of the four districts by double-digit margins during the 2024 presidential campaign, and four by about 9 percentage points.
At the time, amid the economic fallout from the U.S.-Israel war on Iran and when Trump’s approval ratings were at an all-time low, some argued that redrawing the map could backfire on the Republican Party, weakening its stronghold and narrowing the gap.
Redistricting is the process of redrawing electoral district boundaries, usually after the decennial U.S. Census, to account for population changes and maintain approximately equal population in the districts.
Boundaries determine which voters are grouped together to elect members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Because the party in power in the state legislature is often involved in drawing the maps, this process can be used to give one party an electoral advantage. This is known as gerrymandering.
Republicans had hoped to pick up at least 13 seats nationwide in the wake of the map redrawing, but polls suggested their gains could slow further.
