Cite as: 539 U. S. 461 (2003)
Souter, J., dissenting
6
The Court's final effort to demonstrate that Georgia's plan is nonretrogressive focuses on statistics about Georgia Democrats. Ante, at 489. The Court explains that almost all the districts in the proposed plan with a BVAP above 20% have a likely overall Democratic performance above 50%, and from this the Court concludes that "[t]hese statistics make it more likely as a matter of fact that black voters will constitute an effective voting bloc." Ibid. But this is not so. The degree to which the statistics could support any judgment about the effect of black voting in State Senate elections is doubtful, and even on the Court's assumptions the statistics show no clear error by the District Court.
As for doubt about what the numbers have to do with State Senate elections, it is enough to know that the majority's figures are taken from a table describing Democratic voting in statewide, not local, elections. The Court offers no basis for assuming that voting for Democratic candidates in statewide elections correlates with voting behavior in local elections,7 and in fact, the record points to different, not identical, voting patterns. The District Court specifically noted that the United States's expert testified that "African American candidates consistently received less crossover voting in local election[s] than in statewide elections," 195 F. Supp. 2d, at 71, and the court concluded that there is "compelling evidence that racial voting patterns in State Senate races can be expected to differ from racial voting patterns in statewide races," id., at 85-86.
7 Even if the majority wanted to rely on these figures to make a claim about Democratic voting in statewide elections, the predictors' significance is utterly unclear. The majority pulls its figures from an exhibit titled, "Political Data Report," and a column labeled, "%OVER DEMVOTES," Pl. Exh. 2D. See ante, at 489. The document provides no information regarding whether the numbers in the column reflect an average of past performance, a prediction for future performance, or something else altogether.
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