Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016: US Voters in 2012 and 2016, by John Sides.

Drawing on reinterviews of Americans originally interviewed in 2011 to 2012, I show that attitudes about immigration, feelings toward black people, and feelings toward Muslims became more strongly related to voter decision making in 2016 compared to 2012. None of the other factors that I examine show this pattern. …

The Democratic Party has an increasing advantage among nonwhite people. … By contrast, the Republican Party has an increasing advantage among white people—an advantage that only developed after Obama took office. …

The figure shows that white flight from the Democratic Party occurred almost entirely among white people without a college degree….

By 2012, white Democrats and white Republicans diverged over whether they evaluated Muslims favorably and whether immigration should be restricted. …

In December 2016, the survey firm YouGov reinterviewed 8,000 respondents who had been interviewed originally in 2011 to 2012 …

What stands out most, however, is the … attitudes about immigration, feelings toward black people, and feelings toward Muslims. …

For example, 37 percent of white Obama voters had a less favorable attitude toward Muslims … Similarly, 33 percent of white Obama voters said that “illegal immigrants” were “mostly a drain,” compared to 40 percent who said that they “mostly make a contribution” (the rest said “neither” or were not sure). …

By comparison, only 6 percent of white Romney voters thought illegal immigrants make a contribution to American society; the vast majority, nearly 80 percent, thought that these immigrants were a drain.

Steve Sailer comments:

It’s interesting how the less educated tend to be more aware. It’s almost as if education today serves to indoctrinate people to be oblivious to the obvious. …

More than a few white people who voted for Obama in 2012 held views that were too realistic for Hillary in 2016. …

It’s interesting how nobody ever asks about how immigration and affirmative action interact. You are just not supposed to think about how the U.S. keeps importing more people who, as soon as they land, are entitled to racial privileges that come at your expense. …

It’s striking how the Democrats by 2016 were the party of Status Quo Triumphalism and Complacency.

Commenter Mika-Non:

The MSM always frame it as “are you pro-immigration (good) or anti-immigration (bad)?

There’s no room for those of us who believe that a modest amount of immigration–of people who are intelligent, productive, perhaps attractive in other ways–might be worthwhile, but a hundred million third-world indigents might not be?

Anyone who believes this is ipso facto racist, nativist, anti-immigrant, and all the other nasty names they call us. This MSM formulation is no accident.

Commenter Johnny D:

I think working-class whites, or whites without a college degree, are also more opposed to immigration because they actually have to live with all the diversity inflicted upon the country. It’s kinda hard not to notice when the demographics of your neighborhood or hometown have been completely transformed. And it’s kinda hard to support the candidate who thinks it’s great that many of your neighbors don’t speak fluent English. Trump’s slogan for 2020 should be “did you think we wouldn’t notice?”

Commenter Jack Highlands:

What education today really serves is aspirational identification with ruling class morality: ‘signal like us, if you would entertain the least hope of ever being one of us.’

Commenter Rod1963:

After NAFTA the GOP and Democrats become effectively one party at the top. Beneath them were the urban Goodwhites/Cloud People who are economically and socially isolated from the crap they are inflicting on the rest of White society. While they hide in their exclusive communities and their kids attend those costly and exclusive private schools.

Commenter Robard:

Affirmative action perversely serves as a driver for specifically third world immigration as employers are looking abroad for talent to fill their quotas because the American pool is too dilute.