1020
Stevens, J., dissenting
For every geographic atrocity committed by District 30, District 6 commits its own and more. District 30 split precincts to gerrymander Democratic voters out of Republican precincts; District 6 did the same. See State's Exh. 9B (Tar-rant County, showing District 6 cuts). District 30 travels down a riverbed; District 6 follows the boundaries of a lake. District 30 combines various unrelated communities of interest within Dallas and its suburbs; District 6 combines rural, urban, and suburban communities. District 30 sends tentacles nearly 20 miles out from its core; District 6 is a tentacle, hundreds of miles long (as the candidate walks), and it has no core.
The existence of the equally bizarre majority-white District 6 makes the plurality's discussion of District 30's odd shape largely irrelevant. If anything, the similarities between Districts 6 and 30 suggest that it is more likely than not that the incumbency considerations that led to the mutation of District 6 were the same considerations that forced District 30 to twist and turn its way through North Dallas.19
County, then flows back toward Fort Worth from the southwest for another bite at Republican voters near the heart of that city. As it does so, the district narrows in places to not much more than a football field in width. Finally, it heads back into the rural regions of its fifth county— Johnson—where it finally exhausts itself only 50 miles from its origin, but hundreds of "miles apart in distance and worlds apart in culture." Miller, 515 U. S., at 908 (describing a similar combined rural/urban district).
19 Seeking specific examples, the plurality makes much hay over a portion of Collin County located just over the county line north of Dallas. See ante, at 965, 971. There, District 30 excludes a portion of a precinct that voted Democratic in 1990, and maps "exactly onto the only area in the southern half of th[e] county with a [minority] percentage population in excess of 50%." Ante, at 965.
The map to which the plurality refers, however, groups the minority percentage by precinct, and since precincts are defined by the district boundaries, it is no surprise that the district maps "exactly" onto the precinct. See App. 153. (One might similarly argue that "District 30 maps exactly onto the only area in all of north Texas that is 50% black," but such a statement reveals little about the underlying demographics of spe-
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