States and communities with the lowest proportion of immigrants tend to push the hardest for reduced immigration, while areas with a higher number of immigrants tend more in favor of immigration, CNN reported.
President Donald Trump, who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform, won the seven states with the lowest immigrant populations: Mississippi, Montana, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
His opponent, Hillary Clinton, only won two states with less than 5 percent immigrants: Vermont and Maine. Trump, by contrast, only won two states over 15 percent: Texas and Florida.
"Up and down the ballot, this disparity is partly explained by the Democratic advantages among minority voters, whether native-born or naturalized citizens born abroad," CNN's Ronald Brownstein wrote. "But the consistency of this contrast also suggests that suspicion about immigration among the native-born population is generally more intense in places with little exposure to immigrants than in communities where such exposure is more common."
He adds, "the two parties' coalitions are now separated primarily by contrasting attitudes toward the hurtling economic, cultural and demographic changes reconfiguring American life."
Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., one of the only Republicans who represents a district with a sizable foreign-born population, told CNN, "There is no substitute for getting to know people and interacting with people and observing them forming a part of your community, whether it's at church, or working at a restaurant, or a park. And obviously that type of interaction just humanizes people who would otherwise either look foreign or seem foreign."
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