Cite as: 539 U. S. 461 (2003)
Souter, J., dissenting
"made no attempt to address the central issue before the court: whether the State's proposal is retrogressive. He failed even to identify the decreases in BVAP that would occur under the proposed plan, and certainly did not identify corresponding reductions in the electability of African American candidates of choice. The paucity of information in [the expert's] report thus leaves us unable to use his analysis to assess the expected change in African American voting strength statewide that will be brought by the proposed Senate plan." Id., at 81.
B
How is it, then, that the majority of this Court speaks of "Georgia's evidence that the Senate plan as a whole is not retrogressive," against which "the United States did not introduce any evidence [in] rebut[tal]," ante, at 487? The answer is that the Court is not engaging in review for clear error. Instead, it is reweighing evidence de novo, discovering what it thinks the District Court overlooked, and drawing evidentiary conclusions the District Court supposedly did not see. The Court is mistaken on all points.
1
Implicitly recognizing that evidence of voting behavior by majority voters is crucial to any showing of nonretrogression when minority numbers drop under a proposed plan, the Court tries to find evidence to fill the record's gap. It says, for example, that "Georgia introduced evidence showing that approximately one-third of white voters would support a black candidate in [the contested] districts." Ante, at 486. In support of this claim, however, the majority focuses on testimony offered by Georgia's expert relating to crossover voting in the pre-existing rather than proposed districts. 195 F. Supp. 2d, at 66. The District Court specifically noted that the expert did not calculate crossover voting under the proposed plan. Id., at 65, n. 31 ("The court also emphasizes
501
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