582
Opinion of the Court
Based on these and other considerations,10 the District Court concluded that traditional districting principles had not been subordinated to race in drawing revised District 21. Appellant calls this finding clearly erroneous, charging that District 21 encompasses more than one county, crosses a body of water, is irregular in shape, lacks compactness, and contains a percentage of black voters significantly higher than the overall percentage of black voters in Hillsborough, Manatee, and Pinellas Counties. Brief for Appellant 40-45. Appellant's first four points ignore unrefuted evidence showing that on each of these points District 21 is no different from what Florida's traditional districting principles could be expected to produce. See supra, at 580-581. As to appellant's final point, we have never suggested that the percentage of black residents in a district may not exceed the percentage of black residents in any of the counties from which the district is created, and have never recognized similar racial composition of different political districts as being necessary to avoid an inference of racial gerrymandering in any one of them. Since districting can be difficult, after all, just because racial composition varies from place to place, and counties and voting districts do not depend on common principles of size and location, facts about the one do not as such necessarily entail conclusions about the other.
In short, the evidence amply supports the trial court's views that race did not predominate over Florida's traditional districting principles in drawing Plan 386. Appellant has provided nothing that calls that conclusion into question, much less that points to any clear error.
10 Record evidence indicates that the design of revised District 21 was also affected by the need to satisfy one-person, one-vote requirements, App. 28, the desire to retain the existing partisan balance in the Senate, id., at 31, and the desire to avoid out-of-cycle elections, id., at 28-29. See also In re Apportionment Law, 414 So. 2d 1040, 1047-1050 (Fla. 1982) (special elections must be held when district boundaries are changed, disrupting staggered Senate terms).
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