Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 13 Opinion of the Court compact to constitute a majority” in some reasonably configured legislative district. Id., at 50. Second, the minority group must be “politically cohesive.” Id., at 51. And third, a district’s white majority must “vote[ ] sufficiently as a bloc” to usually “defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. Those three showings, we have explained, are needed to establish that “the minority [group] has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice” in a possible district, but that racially polarized voting prevents it from doing so in the district as actually drawn because it is “submerg[ed] in a larger white voting population.” Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S. 25, 40 (1993). If a State has good reason to think that all the “Gingles preconditions” are met, then so too it has good reason to believe that §2 requires drawing a majorityminority district. See Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 978 (1996) (plurality opinion). But if not, then not. Here, electoral history provided no evidence that a §2 plaintiff could demonstrate the third Gingles prerequisite—effective white bloc-voting.4 For most of the twenty years prior to the new plan’s adoption, African-Americans had made up less than a majority of District 1’s voters; the district’s BVAP usually hovered between 46% and 48%. See 159 F. Supp. 3d, at 606; App. 312. Yet throughout those two decades, as the District Court noted, District 1 was “an extraordinarily safe district for African-American preferred candidates.” 159 F. Supp. 3d, at 626. In the closest election during that period, African-Americans’ —————— 4 In the District Court, the parties also presented arguments relating to the first Gingles prerequisite, contesting whether the AfricanAmerican community in the region was sufficiently large and compact to form a majority of a reasonably shaped district. The court chose not to decide that fact-intensive question. And aside from the State’s unelaborated assertion that “[t]here is no question that the first factor was satisfied,” Brief for Appellants 52, the parties have not briefed or argued the issue before us. We therefore have no occasion to address it.