504
Souter, J., dissenting
numerous other ways, given the limited evidence of racially polarized voting in State Senate and local elections, that Georgia could have met its burden of proof in this case. Yet, the court is limited to reviewing the evidence presented by the parties, and is compelled to hold that the State has not met its burden." Id., at 94. "[T]he lack of positive racial polarization data was the gap at the center of the State's case [and] the evidence presented by [the] estimable [legislators] does not come close to filling that void." Id., at 100.
As must be plain, in overturning the District Court's thoughtful consideration of the evidence before it, the majority of this Court is simply rejecting the District Court's evidentiary finding in favor of its own. It is reweighing testimony and making judgments about the competence, interest, and character of witnesses. The Court is not conducting clear error review.
4
Next, the Court attempts to fill the holes in the State's evidence on retrogression by drawing inferences favorable to the State from undisputed statistics. See ante, at 487-489. This exercise comes no closer to demonstrating clear error than the others considered so far.
In the first place, the District Court has already explained the futility of the Court's effort. Knowing whether the number of majority BVAP districts increases, decreases, or stays the same under a proposed plan does not alone allow any firm conclusion that minorities will have a better, or worse, or unvarying opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. Any such inference must depend not only on trends in BVAP levels, but on evidence of likely voter turnout among minority and majority groups, patterns of racial bloc voting, likelihood of white crossover voting, and so on.4 In-4 The fact that the Court premises its analysis on BVAP alone is ironic given that the Court, incorrectly, chastises the District Court for committing the very error the Court now engages in, "fail[ing] to consider all the relevant factors." Ante, at 485.
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