In Marquette Law School’s final 2012 poll of Wisconsin voters, there was a substantial partisan gap over allowing illegal immigrants to stay and eventually apply for citizenship: 68% of Democrats supported it, while only 41% of Republicans did. (Overall, 53% supported a path to citizenship).
But that partisan divide was much smaller than it was over many other issues, including gay marriage, abortion, the Bush tax cuts, and changes to Medicare. The partisan split over immigration is vastly smaller than the partisan split over the new health care law, an extreme example of polarization in which Republicans are almost unanimously opposed and Democrats almost unanimously in favor….