Study finds more immigrants equals more Democrats - and more losses for GOP

Republicans are famously divided on immigration reform [amnesty for illegal aliens], but Democrats pretty much unanimously support it. There's a reason for that...

"The enormous flow of legal immigrants into the country — 29.5 million from 1980 to 2012 — has remade and continues to remake the nation's electorate in favor of the Democratic Party," concludes a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes comprehensive reform proposals like the Senate "Gang of Eight" bill. "As the immigrant population has grown, Republican electoral prospects have dimmed, even after controlling for alternative explanations of GOP performance."

In the report, author James Gimpel, a University of Maryland professor... Through a lot of complicated statistical analysis and close reading of previous studies, he comes to the same conclusion as anyone who has looked through exit polls in the last 30 years: Immigrants tend to vote Democratic...

Gimpel cites several reasons why future immigration will likely mean more Democrats. The first is that "immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned with progressives than with conservatives." Those preferences have expressed themselves in a two-to-one party identification advantage for Democrats in those groups...

The political changes immigration has brought to some of the nation's largest counties are striking...

To some Republicans, Gimpel's findings will be just more proof that the GOP must support comprehensive immigration reform [amnesty for illegal aliens] as it seeks to build ties with immigrant communities. But Gimpel suggests that doesn't matter. "The decline [in Republican identification] does not seem to vary with the local Republican Party's position on illegal immigration," he writes...

But it's also reasonable for Republicans not to support policies that could worsen their electoral prospects, if not doom their party to decades of defeat. After all, Democrats are certainly acting in what they perceive to be their party's best political interests...

Full Report:

Read the full report: Immigration's Impact on Republican Political Prospects, 1980 to 2012, James G. Gimpel Center for Immigration Studies, April, 2014.

Related articles:

Why is the GOP leadership pushing amnesty for Democrats?, Fred Elbel, February 6, 2014.

The GOP and Immigration - Principled suicide vs. death by pandering, Stanley Renshon, Center for Immigration Studies, July 22, 2013.

A Dissection of Mike Coffman's Misguided Amnesty Missive, Fred Elbel, July 27, 2013.