Cite as: 532 U. S. 234 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
six/six Democrat/Republican delegation split) to make their seats, not 60% safe, but as safe as possible. App. 149. In a field such as voting behavior, where figures are inherently uncertain, Dr. Weber's tiny calculated percentage differences are simply too small to carry significant evidentiary weight.
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The District Court cited two parts of the transcript where Dr. Weber testified about a table he had prepared listing all precincts in the six counties, portions of which make up District 12. Tr. 204-205, 262. Dr. Weber said that District 12 contains between 39% and 56% of the precincts (depending on the county) that are more-than-40% reliably Democratic, but it contains almost every precinct with more-than-40% African-American voters. Id., at 204-205. Why, he essentially asks, if the legislature had had politics primarily in mind, would its effort to place reliably Democratic precincts within District 12 not have produced a greater racial mixture?
Dr. Weber's own testimony provides an answer to this question. As Dr. Weber agreed, the precincts listed in the table were at least 40% reliably Democratic, but virtually all the African-American precincts included in District 12 were more than 40% reliably Democratic. Moreover, none of the excluded white precincts were as reliably Democratic as the African-American precincts that were included in the district. App. 140. Yet the legislature sought precincts that were reliably Democratic, not precincts that were 40% reliably Democratic, for obvious political reasons.
Neither does the table specify whether the excluded white-reliably-Democratic precincts were located near enough to District 12's boundaries or each other for the legislature as a practical matter to have drawn District 12's boundaries to have included them, without sacrificing other important political goals. The contrary is suggested by the
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