A new national poll of registered voters has found that just one in five Democrats and fewer than one in 10 Republicans supports proposals to allow illegal immigrants to pay cheaper in-state tuition at public colleges.

The issue of whether to allow illegal immigrants to be eligible for education benefits has sparked heated exchanges in the presidential campaign, especially among Republicans.

The poll was conducted by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg. Its findings were based on interviews conducted last Friday through Monday with 1,245 registered voters. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Voters’ resistance to in-state tuition for illegal immigrants sheds light on why Mike Huckabee, a Republican and former governor of Arkansas, has taken flak from others in his party for his support of a bill that would have made some illegal immigrants who grew up attending schools in Arkansas eligible for the state’s merit-based aid program, a Times story about the poll noted.

The poll also suggests that neither party heads into the 2008 election with a decisive advantage on the issue, according to the newspaper.

Those surveyed were almost evenly split on which of the two major parties would do a better job of handling immigration policy: 31 percent chose Republicans and 30 percent picked Democrats.