Cite as: 539 U. S. 461 (2003)
Souter, J., dissenting
U. S. 471, 478 (1997). It must show not merely that minority voters in new districts may have some influence, but that minority voters will have effective influence translatable into probable election results comparable to what they enjoyed under the existing district scheme. And to demonstrate this, a State must do more than produce reports of minority voting age percentages; it must show that the probable voting behavior of nonminority voters will make coalitions with minorities a real prospect. See, e. g., Pildes, Is Voting-Rights Law Now at War With Itself? Social Science and Voting Rights in the 2000s, 80 N. C. L. Rev. 1517, 1539 (2002). If the State's evidence fails to convince a factfinder that high racial polarization in voting is unlikely, or that high white crossover voting is likely, or that other political and demographic facts point to probable minority effectiveness, a reduction in supermajority districts must be treated as potentially and fatally retrogressive, the burden of persuasion always being on the State.
The District Court majority perfectly well understood all this and committed no error. Error enters this case here in this Court, whose majority unmoors § 5 from any practical and administrable conception of minority influence that would rule out retrogression in a transition from majority-minority districts, and mistakes the significance of the evidence supporting the District Court's decision.
II
The Court goes beyond recognizing the possibility of coalition districts as nonretrogressive alternatives to those with majorities of minority voters when it redefines effective voting power in § 5 analysis without the anchoring reference to electing a candidate of choice. It does this by alternatively suggesting that a potentially retrogressive redistricting plan could satisfy § 5 if a sufficient number of so-called "influence districts," in addition to "coalitio[n] districts," were created, ante, at 483, 484, or if the new plan provided minority groups
493
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