Opinion ID: 727396
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Political Cohesiveness and Racial Bloc Voting

Text: 41 The district court essentially collapsed these two preconditions, intertwining observations about whether Hispanics vote cohesively on some issues with general observations about racial bloc voting. However, as we have stated, both inquiries are rooted in the same statistical evidence offered to show minorities have expressed clear political preferences. Gomez, 863 F.2d at 1415. We therefore do not fault the conjunctive approach. However, the heart of each inquiry requires a searching look into the statistical evidence to discern the way voters voted. Missing this essential inquiry, the district court chose instead to examine plaintiffs' evidence and superimpose its view of the reasons for, or causes of, voting behavior. Sanchez, 861 F.Supp. at 1527. Regrettably, those reasons are not relevant at this point. 42 Without expressly addressing any of plaintiffs' statistical evidence, the district court rejected bivariate ecological regression and homogeneous precinct analyses and embraced the State's proof based on multivariate regression analysis, a statistical method that helps determine whether one variable--here race--makes an 'independent' contribution to voting decisions once other factors such as newspaper endorsements, incumbency, campaign spending, and the socioeconomic characteristics of the voters are taken into account. See Bernard Grofman, Lisa Handley, & Richard G. Niemi, Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality 83 (1992). In this case, the variable of interest the State's expert selected was the percent of Democratic vote share judged against over forty other variables. In contrast, the bivariate ecological regression analysis presented to the district court used only two variables of interest: the percentage vote for the Hispanic candidate tracked along a vertical axis with the percentage of Hispanic voting age population appearing on the horizontal axis. 43 To us who are statistics neophytes, bivariate ecological regression analysis identifies the differences while multivariate regression analysis explains the differences. Id. at 100. 19 However, [t]he legal standard for the existence of racially polarized voting looks only to the difference between how majority votes and minority votes were cast; it does not ask why those votes were cast the way they were nor whether there were other factors present in contested elections, such as 'white backlash.'  Collins v. City of Norfolk, Va., 816 F.2d 932, 935 (4th Cir.1987). 44 Despite these differences, the district court cited no basis in the evidence to validate the use of either methodology or square that evidence with the proper legal focus. Although the court stated it would not restrict its examination to Dr. Bardwell's bivariate analysis, but will also consider Dr. Zax's multivariate analysis, 861 F.Supp. at 1527, its conclusions made no reference to plaintiffs' statistical proof 20 and did not address with any specificity the State's statistical evidence. Although the court referenced lay testimony figuring into its conclusion, it neither identified the lay witnesses nor examined how their testimony established, without more, the absence of racial bloc voting. Instead, in general, the court found substantial evidence that many factors influence voting behavior and electoral success in H.D. 60. Id. 21 45 At this juncture, it bears reminding Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a) requires the district court, sitting without a jury, to find the facts specially. That must be the premise of our clearly erroneous appellate review. Broad and general findings, not explicitly tethered to any particular testimony--especially in the VRA context which demands penetrating case by case, fact bound analysis--simply do not provide the foundation for proper appellate review. Thus, as the court stated in Teague v. Attala County, Miss., 17 F.3d 796, 798 (5th Cir.1994), in making its intensely fact-specific inquiry here, the district court ought to have discussed appellants' statistical evidence more thoroughly because that was the principal evidence they offered and because their statistics had at least surface plausibility. In this case, the district court did not even address plaintiffs' statistical proof, leaving us little basis for review. 46 In that absence, we till the same ground. Dr. Bardwell testified he aimed his analysis to address the question whether there is legally significant racial bloc voting in HD 60. To that end, he explained he used a two equation method for ecological regression analysis and a one equation method for the scatter plots. 22 This methodology mirrored EDS's although Dr. Bardwell stated he analyzed more elections in the targeted counties. Like EDS, 23 he did not include elections in which an Anglo candidate opposed an Anglo candidate based on the presumption Hispanic voters prefer Hispanic candidates. 24 In all, he analyzed 53 elections, 46 of which, he testified, evidenced statistically significant polarization. He included the elections for HD 60 representative, primary elections, 25 and exogenous elections incorporating the proposed alternative district to examine Hispanic cohesiveness in these non-coincidental jurisdictions. 26 His studies concluded in the proposed alternative district, Hispanics voted cohesively. 47 Of greatest interest are his results for the 1980, 1982, and 1992 elections for HD 60 representative to the Colorado General Assembly. In those endogenous races, that is, elections involving the legislative seats on which plaintiffs premise their vote dilution claim, the correlation coefficients, how the data points fall on a line, are 0.83%, 0.88%, and 0.82%, graphically demonstrating on the scatter plots the high correlation between the voter's ethnicity and vote for the Hispanic candidate of choice. 27 This analysis revealed 86% Hispanic cohesiveness for the 1980 HD 60 election and 84% Anglo bloc vote; 89% Hispanic cohesiveness in 1982 and 90% Anglo bloc vote; and, in 1992, 89% Hispanic cohesiveness and 83% Anglo bloc vote. Homogeneous precinct analysis largely replicated this graphic picture. A similar analysis done for both the election of then Democrat Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Native American who ran for the United States Senate in 1992, and for the 1988 Amendment 1 ballot initiative declaring English the official language of Colorado also mirrored this pattern of Hispanic political cohesiveness in HD 60 and its expanded borders. 28 For all of the elections studied, Dr. Bardwell found a mean cohesiveness among Hispanic voters of 83% and among Anglos of 71%. Consequently, Dr. Bardwell concluded these figures established a particularly high level of polarization. 29 48 Dr. Bardwell testified his figures for the white crossover vote were slightly lower than those generated by EDS' studies: he calculated an Anglo crossover vote between 10-17% while EDS, which studied fewer elections, determined a 20% Anglo crossover vote. However, he also observed a predictable Hispanic crossover vote that ranged between 11-14% counterbalanced the Anglo crossover vote. Because of the virtual neutralization of the crossover vote demonstrating equal polarization, Dr. Bardwell concluded a majority district is necessary to give Hispanics the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. 49 In contrast, the State's expert, Dr. Jeffrey Zax, testified his goal was to understand why in five counties with Hispanic voting age populations slightly under 40%, there is dramatic variation in the success of Hispanic candidates. Consequently, his focus was to account for the difference in the rate of minority success explained by something other than the percent of Hispanics. To that end, he utilized the methodology of multivariate regression analysis, believing that voting behavior is a construct of complex factors. His analysis produced five conclusions: (1) heavily Hispanic precincts vote more heavily for Democratic candidates; (2) ethnicity plays a subsidiary role; (3) other factors, incumbency, gender, etc., affect who wins; (4) socioeconomic factors affect the way precincts vote; and (5) the differences in elections arise from differences in platforms, personalities, campaign financing, and often factors difficult to measure. Taken together, Dr. Zax concluded Hispanics vote for Democrats, and Democrats don't beat Republicans in HD 60. 50 To validate his finding, Dr. Zax relied on seven hypothetical contests, the most pertinent of which predicted that an Hispanic Democrat non-incumbent male will defeat an Anglo Republican non-incumbent male in a run for the current HD 60 seat. To unseat an incumbent Anglo Republican candidate, however, an Hispanic candidate needs a more heavily Hispanic district, he observed. Nevertheless, an Anglo Democrat running against an incumbent Anglo Republican also loses by an even greater percentage, he predicted. 51 Thus, although his statistical model produced a similar pattern of racial bloc voting, Dr. Zax infused the calculations with different meanings. Indeed, what seems most striking about his analysis is that he used approximately the same numbers to predict outcomes, rather than focusing on the actual elections to examine their outcomes. Based on these predictions, plumbed from the interplay of 49 explanatory variables, Dr. Zax concluded, political affiliation is the single most important factor that distinguishes between the vote outcomes in precincts that are heavily Hispanics [sic] and heavily Anglo in House District 60. The role of ethnicity, on the other hand, is relatively minor. (italics added). That is, if Anglo Democrats compete against Anglo Republicans and partisanship is the prime determinant, the single variant of ethnicity virtually disappears. The inquiry sidesteps Gingles' primary analytic focus under § 2. Moreover, in this case, the theory does not appear to be supported by present or historical facts. 52 First, the naked figures demonstrate registered Democrats in HD 60 have a numerical edge in district-wide elections, if partisanship is the prime motivator of voting behavior. The district court found: (1) about 80% of the Hispanic voting age population is registered Democrat; (2) 20% is registered Republican; (3) 56% of the Anglo population is registered Republican; (4) 44% is registered Democrat; and (5) 16% is registered Independent. 861 F.Supp. at 1527-28. 30 When the percentage of Hispanic and Anglo Democratic vote is combined, Democrat voters district-wide voting solely along party lines would appear to command a plurality. Clearly, some other factor, however, affects the presumed Anglo and Hispanic Democratic vote. EDS concluded it was ethnicity as did Dr. Bardwell. Dr. Zax disagreed, although he testified, in a 100% Anglo voting age population precinct, the Anglo candidate will receive a majority of the votes regardless of whether that candidate is a democrat or a republican. 31 53 In addition to relying on the State's multivariate analysis, the district court utilized EDS' figure that approximately 20% of Anglo voters in the Valley cross over to vote for the Hispanic candidate of choice and acknowledged Dr. Bardwell's estimate of 13-17% Anglo cross-over. Adding either of these estimates to 42.38% Hispanic voting age population, the court calculated approximately 60% of the voting age population could be projected to vote for the Hispanic candidate of choice. The court then concluded plaintiffs failed to prove the third Gingles' precondition, that Anglos vote sufficiently as a bloc usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. 861 F.Supp. at 1528. 54 Gingles, however, doesn't require an absolute monolith in the Anglo or Hispanic bloc vote and recognizes the existence and role of white crossover voting. It does ask, though, whether as a practical matter, whites usually vote as a bloc to defeat the minority preferred candidate. In the face of the array of statistical evidence and the discordant interpretations they produced, the historical fact that an Hispanic candidate has not won election to the state legislature from HD 60 since 1940 must also figure into the district court's evidentiary base. See Cane v. Worcester County, Md., 35 F.3d 921, 926 (4th Cir.1994). Thus, whatever the numbers may mean, as a practical matter an Hispanic candidate has never held the HD 60 seat since the district has been drawn to include the Valley. [T]he lack of success of Hispanic candidates is a strong factor tending to show vote dilution. Sanchez v. Bond, 875 F.2d at 1496. 55 Moreover, the record does not validate Dr. Zax's predictions. He predicted, based on his analysis of 49 explanatory variables, an Hispanic Democrat non-incumbent male will defeat an Anglo Republican non-incumbent male for the HD 60 seat. In 1982, however, the first time the Valley was included in present HD 60, Republican Lewis Entz, the non-incumbent Anglo candidate, defeated Democrat Alex Marquez, the Hispanic non-incumbent. We believe, therefore, actual outcomes, not predictions of outcomes, provide a more appropriate test. 56 In concluding partisanship not ethnicity accounted for voting behavior in HD 60, the district court relied on League of United Latin American Citizens Council No. 4434 v. Clements, 999 F.2d 831, 853-54 (5th Cir.1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1071, 114 S.Ct. 878, 127 L.Ed.2d 74 (1994) (LULAC), where minority plaintiffs contended the Texas system of electing trial judges in countywide elections violated § 2. The case is not apposite. First, it operates in a special context in which the courts have weighed the linkage of the judicial and jurisdictional districts a state draws as an important factor in the totality of circumstances. Second, it was premised on the fact that plaintiffs made no effort to establish racial bloc voting in the first instance, relying instead on what they believed was the uncontrovertible evidence of minority failure at the polls. Given Shaw I 's caution, it is not mere suffering at the polls but discrimination in the polity with which the Constitution is concerned, 509 U.S. at 661, 113 S.Ct. at 2835 (White, J., dissenting) (citing Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 91 S.Ct. 1858, 29 L.Ed.2d 363 (1971), and White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 93 S.Ct. 2332, 37 L.Ed.2d 314 (1973)), LULAC held [e]lectoral losses that are attributable to partisan politics do not implicate the protections of § 2. 999 F.2d at 863. However, built-in bias at the polls differs from partisan defeat at the polls. And, LULAC actually left for another day the question whether limiting the racial bloc voting inquiry to a determination whether or not divergent voting patterns are attributable to partisan differences or an underlying divergence in interests best captures the mandate of § 2, recognizing that partisan affiliation may serve as a proxy for illegitimate racial considerations. Id. at 860. LULAC is, thus, distinguishable and, despite its particular factual context, does not refocus the probativeness of plaintiffs' substantial statistical evidence here. 57 We believe the district court relied too much on LULAC and not enough on Gingles in its ultimate analysis of plaintiffs' proof. We would also trace its mischaracterizing the evidence of racially polarized voting, in part, to its misperceiving Gingles' position on the minority's candidate of choice. Citing Justice Brennan's discussion in Part III-C in which only three Justices joined, the district court embraced the per se view that the race of the candidate is irrelevant to the racial bloc voting analysis, a view that five Justices rejected. 861 F.Supp. at 1526. In a separate concurrence, Justice White observed that if race was neutralized by removing the candidate's ethnicity from the racial bloc voting equation, and blacks and whites simply voted along party lines, we could substitute interest group politics as a rule hedging against discrimination to explain each outcome. 478 U.S. at 83, 106 S.Ct. at 2783 (White, J., concurring). I doubt this is what Congress had in mind in amending § 2 as it did, Justice White wrote. Id. Justice O'Connor, joined by three other Justices, agreed that defendants cannot rebut a showing of racial bloc voting by offering evidence that the divergent racial voting patterns may be explained in part by causes other than race, such as an underlying divergence in the interest of minority and white votes. 478 U.S. at 100, 106 S.Ct. at 2792 (O'Connor, J., concurring in the judgment). 32 The Gingles' majority, then, concluded the candidate's race is never irrelevant but, generally, is of less significance than the race of the voter--but only within the context of an election that offers voters the choice of supporting a viable minority candidate. Citizens for a Better Gretna v. City of Gretna, La., 834 F.2d 496, 503 (5th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 492 U.S. 905, 109 S.Ct. 3213, 106 L.Ed.2d 564 (1989). 58 Second, while lay testimony is relevant to determine who is the candidate of choice, it is not alone dispositive. In Gingles, the Court acknowledged the district court credited some testimony of lay witnesses, but relied principally on statistical evidence. 478 U.S. at 52, 106 S.Ct. at 2767. Sanchez v. Bond also approved the use of lay testimony. However, absent the finding the statistical evidence is unreliable, insufficient, or irrelevant, lay testimony should not eclipse the analysis. 59 Certainly, key to examining racial polarization in the challenged electoral mechanism is determining for whom voters vote. Ascertaining whether legally significant white bloc voting exists begins with the identification of the minority members' 'preferred candidates' or 'representatives of their choice.'  Collins v. City of Norfolk, Va., 883 F.2d 1232, 1237 (4th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 938, 111 S.Ct. 340, 112 L.Ed.2d 305 (1990). Only then can the district court determine whether whites vote sufficiently as a bloc usually to defeat the minority's choice. 60 Although this court has accepted evidence of Anglo versus Anglo races on the ground such elections may be relevant to discern whether racially polarized voting is present, we cautioned the evidence is useful only so long as one of the Anglo candidates can be considered a preferred candidate of the minority group. Sanchez v. Bond, 875 F.2d at 1495. Sanchez v. Bond offers no guidance for the district court to determine who is the minority's candidate of choice. However, without that evaluation and with a history of Anglo/Anglo contests, we fall prey to the myopic presumption there is a minority preferred candidate in any race in which the minority votes. While some courts shortcut the question looking only to the candidate who has received more than 50% of the minority vote, NAACP, 65 F.3d at 1019, we now believe some additional direction would be helpful. 61 Again we turn to Gingles which requires plaintiffs establish by a preponderance of the evidence who is the preferred minority candidate in each election. While experience does demonstrate that minority candidates will tend to be candidates of choice among the minority, this inference alone is not sufficient to meet plaintiffs' burden. Jenkins, 4 F.3d at 1126. Hence, minority plaintiffs must introduce some additional evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, to satisfy this burden. The additional evidence required to meet the threshold, however, is not very substantial, and the burden may be satisfied with a variety of evidence, including lay testimony or statistical analyses of voting patterns. Id. 62 We also embrace Jenkins' guidance to judge defendants' evidence that white candidates were, in fact, minority preferred. The Fourth Circuit counsels in measuring this evidence, the court must engage in a detailed, practical evaluation of the extent to which any particular white candidate was, as a realistic matter, the minority voters' representative of choice. Id. at 1129. One factor it suggests is the extent to which the minority community can be said to have sponsored the candidate, to examine minority involvement in originally sponsoring the candidate or helping to finance the candidate's campaign. Id. Another factor is the candidate's attention to the issues concerning minorities; the extent the candidate campaigned in the minority's neighborhoods or addressed predominantly minority crowds. Id. Evidence of minority turnout for the election would also be relevant as well as evidence of disincentives for minorities to run for office in the first instance. Id. Another factor is evidence of the Anglo candidate's ties to the minority community. For example, in this case, one of plaintiffs' witnesses, an Anglo elected Saguache County Commissioner, was the minority preferred candidate because, he testified, he is married to an Hispanic who helped him campaign in Hispanic precincts. This list, of course, is not exclusive, and the district court must be sensitive to the quality of the evidence plaintiffs and defendants offer to assist in this factfinding. 63 Thus, after such a searching evaluation, the district court may find the minority preferred candidate is, in fact, Anglo. However, the answer cannot be shorthanded by the candidate's partisan label or ethnic or racial status. As Justice O'Connor noted, the question arises within the context of determining whether racial bloc voting defeats the minority's opportunity to elect a candidate of its choice. Indeed, the VRA ensures members of a protected class equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice, not necessarily members of their class. NAACP, 65 F.3d at 1015. However, § 2's guarantee of equal opportunity is not met when '[c]andidates favored by blacks can win, but only if the candidates are white.'  Clarke v. City of Cincinnati, 40 F.3d 807, 812 (6th Cir.1994) (quoting Smith v. Clinton, 687 F.Supp. 1310, 1318 (E.D.Ark.1988) (three-judge panel)). 64 While any statistical analysis permits a body of data to tell a story, how the story is read, each reader bringing a different focus to the details, alters the theme. The glass, after all, is either half empty or half full. Gingles, however, instructs us to look for the theme of racial polarization and the extent to which that polarization robs the minority of meaningful access to the political process. While that may initially set a rather stark stage, establishing vote dilution does not require the plaintiffs affirmatively to disprove every other possible explanation for racially polarized voting. Uno, 72 F.3d at 983. Requiring plaintiffs to rebut a showing that partisan politics and not racial bias operates to defeat their § 2 claim may arise in another setting. However, it is not the story here. 65 We therefore hold the district court committed reversible error in concluding plaintiffs failed to establish racial bloc voting. First, the district court rejected plaintiffs' evidence of racial bloc voting, even though they used the same statistical method approved in Gingles and most of the § 2 case law. Although criticizing various aspects of the methodology, without any searching analysis of the evidence in the first instance, the court's critique is without foundation. Second, it adopted the State's statistical theory on the mistaken view that why voters vote a certain way answers Gingles' question about the existence of racial bloc voting. Finally, the court overlooked the substantial evidence of Anglo bloc voting, incorrectly holding that the single factor of partisanship explained electoral outcomes in a § 2 challenge in HD 60. 66 Because the district court misread the governing law, we reverse its conclusion plaintiffs failed to establish geographical compactness, Hispanic cohesiveness, and Anglo bloc voting. We turn now to the ultimate issue of the totality of circumstances.