28 COOPER v. HARRIS Opinion of the Court And those contemporaneous descriptions comported with the court’s credibility determinations about the trial testimony—that Watt told the truth when he recounted Rucho’s resolve to hit a majority-BVAP target; and conversely that Hofeller skirted the truth (especially as to Guilford County) when he claimed to have followed only race-blind criteria in drawing district lines. We cannot disrespect such credibility judgments. See Anderson, 470 U. S., at 575 (A choice to believe “one of two or more witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible story that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence,” can “virtually never be clear error”). And more generally, we will not take it upon ourselves to weigh the trial evidence as if we were the first to hear it. See id., at 573 (A “reviewing court oversteps” under Rule 52(a) “if it undertakes to duplicate the role of the lower court”). No doubt other interpretations of that evidence were permissible. Maybe we would have evaluated the testimony differently had we presided over the trial; or then again, maybe we would not have. Either way—and it is only this which matters—we are far from having a “definite and firm conviction” that the District Court made a mistake in concluding from the record before it that racial considerations predominated in District 12’s design. B The State mounts a final, legal rather than factual, attack on the District Court’s finding of racial predominance. When race and politics are competing explanations of a district’s lines, argues North Carolina, the party challenging the district must introduce a particular kind of circumstantial evidence: “an alternative [map] that achieves the legislature’s political objectives while improving racial balance.” Brief for Appellants 31 (emphasis deleted). That is true, the State says, irrespective of what other evidence is in the case—so even if the plaintiff offers