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Mariasol Lota, second from the right, holds an American flag as she is sworn-in as a U.S. citizen...

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

In stark, partisan political terms, continuing the high level of immigration of recent decades, and certainly increasing immigration as envisioned by many reformers, will result in more Democrats winning more elections in coming years.

"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, looks at the immigrants who have come to the United States in recent decades and those likely to come in the future. 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.

A 2012 study of 2,900 foreign-born, naturalized immigrants cited in the report showed that about 62 percent identified themselves as Democrats, while 25 percent identified as Republicans, and 13 percent identified as independents. At this moment, according to the report, there are an estimated 8.7 million immigrants in the U.S. who are eligible for naturalization. Not all will become voting citizens, but somewhere between 50 percent and 60 percent will. And it's a sure bet that a majority will identify themselves as Democrats.

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.

Another reason is that the arrival of immigrants, whose ranks include substantial numbers of the poor and unskilled, increases income inequality in the areas they choose to live. "It is from areas of higher income inequality," writes Gimpel, "that we find the most support for a robust government with an expansive regulatory and redistributive role in the economy, among all citizens, not just immigrants." That will likely mean more electoral success for Democrats.

Gimpel found that the partisan impact of immigration "is relatively uniform throughout the country from California to Texas to Florida." If immigrants arrive in large numbers, areas that are already Democratic become more so, while areas that are Republican become more Democratic. That applies to Texas and other red-state strongholds as much as anywhere else.

The political changes immigration has brought to some of the nation's largest counties are striking. Broward County, Fla., was made up of 11.1 percent immigrants in 1980 and is 31.2 percent immigrant today. It was 55.9 percent Republican in 1980 and 32.4 percent today. San Bernardino County, Calif., was 7.7 percent immigrant in 1980, and 21.4 percent today. It was 59.7 percent Republican back then, and is 46.2 percent today. Clark County, Nev., was 7.6 percent immigrant in 1980 and is 21.9 percent today. It was 59.8 percent Republican then and is 42.6 percent today.

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