Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 25 Opinion of the Court The State’s contrary story—that politics alone drove decisionmaking—came into the trial mostly through Hofeller’s testimony. Hofeller explained that Rucho and Lewis instructed him, first and foremost, to make the map as a whole “more favorable to Republican candidates.” App. 2682. One agreed-on stratagem in that effort was to pack the historically Democratic District 12 with even more Democratic voters, thus leaving surrounding districts more reliably Republican. See id., at 2682–2683, 2696–2697. To that end, Hofeller recounted, he drew District 12’s new boundaries based on political data— specifically, the voting behavior of precincts in the 2008 Presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain. See id., at 2701–2702. Indeed, he claimed, he displayed only this data, and no racial data, on his computer screen while mapping the district. See id., at 2721. In part of his testimony, Hofeller further stated that the Obama-McCain election data explained (among other things) his incorporation of the black, but not the white, parts of Guilford County then located in District 13. See id., at 2824. Only after he drew a politics-based line between those adjacent areas, Hofeller testified, did he “check[ ]” the racial data and “f[ind] out” that the resulting configuration of District 12 “did not have a [§5] issue.” Id., at 2822. The District Court, however, disbelieved Hofeller’s asserted indifference to the new district’s racial composition. The court recalled Hofeller’s contrary deposition testimony—his statement (repeated in only slightly different words in his expert report) that Rucho and Lewis “decided” to shift African-American voters into District 12 “in order to” ensure preclearance under §5. See 159 F. Supp. 3d, at 619–620; App. 558. And the court explained that even at trial, Hofeller had given testimony that undermined his “blame it on politics” claim. Right after asserting that Rucho and Lewis had told him “[not]