32 ALEXANDER v. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP KAGAN, J., dissenting the higher turnout of a presidential election, along with its greater focus on individual candidates, makes it a poorer measure of a district’s year-in, year-out partisan tilt. See App. 135. The State’s own expert did not contest that view, so the majority’s skepticism again finds no support in the trial record. And even if 2020 data is better than 2018 data—it might be—what is better than either is both. That is what the Challengers had: Ragusa’s study based on 2020 data and Liu’s based on 2018 data, each showing a racial gerrymander. Much the same thing is true as to a more obscure methodological issue the majority raises (again, needless to say, sua sponte): whether statistical analysis should “operate[ ] at the voter level” or the precinct level. Ante, at 27, n. 9. Here, the majority cannot get its attack-line consistent. First the majority claims that Ragusa’s testimony was worse than the expert’s in Cooper because Ragusa’s relied on “precinct-level analysis” rather than looking at individual voters. Ibid. But within a page the majority asserts that Liu’s study was “highly unrealistic” because he “treated each voter as an independent unit” rather than considering “neighbors” together. Ante, at 27–28. So an expert challenging a gerrymander can’t win either way. But put that aside; the key thing, once more, is that the Challengers had not one but two types of analysis working in their favor. However a statistician looked at the data— whether voter-level or precinct-level—he reached the same conclusion: that the State’s mapmakers targeted Black voters. And the State offered little by way of rebuttal. It, too, had an expert witness. And that witness, Sean Trende, took a couple of shots at Ragusa’s methods. See ECF Doc. 510, at 46–52. But he did not offer the most relevant kind of evidence—a counter-analysis showing that partisanship subsumed race in the design of District 1. Trende had access

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