Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
traditions); id., at 147 (map showing splitting of city limits); id., at 128, Plaintiffs' Exh. 6E1, Attachment A (map illustrating splitting of voting precincts).
As with District 30, appellants adduced evidence that incumbency protection played a role in determining the bizarre district lines. The District Court found that one constraint on the shape of District 29 was the rival ambitions of its two "functional incumbents," who distorted its boundaries in an effort to include larger areas of their existing state legislative constituencies. 861 F. Supp., at 1340. But the District Court's findings amply demonstrate that such influences were overwhelmed in the determination of the districts' bizarre shapes by the State's efforts to maximize racial divisions. The State's VRA § 5 submission explains that the bizarre configuration of Districts 18 and 29 "result[s] in the maximization of minority voting strength" in Harris County, App. 110, corroborating the District Court's finding that "[i]n the earliest stages of the Congressional redistricting process, state Democratic and Republican leaders rallied behind the idea of creating a new Hispanic safe seat in Harris County while preserving the safe African-American seat in District 18." 861 F. Supp., at 1324. State officials testified that "it was particularly necessary to split [voter tabulation districts] in order to capture pockets of Hispanic residents" for District 29, and that a 61% Hispanic population in that district— not a mere majority—was insisted upon. Id., at 1340-1341. The record evidence of the racial demographics and voting patterns of Harris County residents belies any suggestion that party politics could explain the dividing lines between the two districts: The district lines correlate almost perfectly with race, see App. 151-152, while both districts are similarly solidly Democratic, see id., at 194. And, even more than in District 30, the intricacy of the lines drawn, separating Hispanic voters from African-American voters on a block-by-block basis, betrays the critical impact of the block-by-block racial data available on the REDAPPL program. The Dis-
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