158
Opinion of the Court
however, we held that the Gingles preconditions apply in challenges to single-member as well as multimember districts. Ante, at 40-41.
Had the District Court employed the Gingles test in this case, it would have rejected appellees' § 2 claim. Of course, the Gingles factors cannot be applied mechanically and without regard to the nature of the claim. For example, the first Gingles precondition, the requirement that the group be sufficiently large to constitute a majority in a single district, would have to be modified or eliminated when analyzing the influence-dilution claim we assume, arguendo, to be actionable today. Supra, at 154. The complaint in such a case is not that black voters have been deprived of the ability to constitute a majority, but of the possibility of being a sufficiently large minority to elect their candidate of choice with the assistance of cross-over votes from the white majority. See ibid. We need not decide how Gingles' first factor might apply here, however, because appellees have failed to demonstrate Gingles' third precondition—sufficient white majority bloc voting to frustrate the election of the minority group's candidate of choice. The District Court specifically found that Ohio does not suffer from "racially polarized voting." 794 F. Supp., at 700-701. Accord, App. to Juris. Statement 132a-134a, and n. 2, 139a-140a. Even appellees agree. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 25. Here, as in Gingles, "in the absence of significant white bloc voting it cannot be said that the ability of minority voters to elect their chosen representatives is inferior to that of white voters." Gingles, 478 U. S., at 49, n. 15. The District Court's finding of a § 2 violation, therefore, must be reversed.
III
The District Court also held that the redistricting plan violated the Fifteenth Amendment because the apportionment board intentionally diluted minority voting strength for political reasons. App. to Juris. Statement 142a-143a.
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