264
Thomas, J., dissenting
cused his analysis on performance. He did so in response to our concerns, when we reversed the District Court's summary judgment finding, that voter registration might not be the best measure of the Democratic nature of a precinct. See ibid. (citing Trial Tr., which appears at App. 90-92, 105- 107, 156-157). This fact was not lost on the District Court, which specifically referred to those pages of the record covering Dr. Weber's analysis of performance.
Third, the court credited Dr. Weber's testimony that the districting decisions could not be explained by political motives.5 133 F. Supp. 2d, at 419. In the first instance, I, like the Court, ante, at 246-247, might well have concluded that District 12 was not significantly "safer" than several other districts in North Carolina merely because its Democratic reliability exceeded the optimum by only 3 percent. And I might have concluded that it would make political sense for incumbents to adopt a "the more reliable the better" policy
5 Dr. Weber admitted that, when he first concluded that race was the motivating factor, he was under the mistaken impression that the legislature's computer program provided only racial, not political, data. The Court finds that this admission undercut the validity of Dr. Weber's conclusions. See ante, at 249-250. Although the District Court could have found that this impression was a sufficiently significant assumption in Dr. Weber's analysis that the conclusions drawn from the analysis were suspect, it was not required to do so as a matter of logic. The court reasonably could have believed that the false impression had very little to do with the statistical analysis that was largely responsible for Dr. Weber's conclusions.
In addition, the Court discounts Dr. Weber's testimony because he "express[ed] disdain for a process that we have cautioned courts to respect," ante, at 250. Dr. Weber did openly state that he believes that the best districts he had seen in the 1990's were those drawn by judges, not by legislatures. App. 150-151. However, whether Dr. Weber was simply stating the conclusions he has reached through his experience or was expressing a feeling of contempt toward the legislature is precisely the kind of tone, demeanor, and bias determination that even the Court acknowledges should be left to the factfinder, cf. ante, at 243.
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