A Great Issue For Democrats In 2014

I was interested in the public's opinion of raising the minimum wage, and wondered if any polls had shown a majority against that. After doing a bit of googling, I found these eight polls -- Gallup Poll, Pew Research Center survey, Public Religion Research Institute survey, Hart Research Poll, NBC News/WSJ Poll, CBS News Poll, Rasmussen Poll, and the Zogby Analytics Poll. They are the most recent national polls I could find.

Note that while they may disagree a bit on the numbers, they all agree on one thing -- that a significantly large majority of the American people think the current minimum wage is too low, and they support raising it. A discussion could be had (and needs to be had) regarding how much to raise the minimum wage, and whether to tie the wage to the rate of inflation -- but any discussion of whether the minimum wage should be raised has been decided -- most of the people, in all parts of the country, want it raised.

If the Democrats are smart, they will make this a major issue in the 2014 election -- along with protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits. These are all issues on which a huge majority of voters agree with the Democratic position, but Democrats should especially emphasize the minimum wage issue.

While the Republicans are busy trying to cut benefits or dismantle the Social Security and Medicare systems, they claim to be trying to protect them -- and some in the public have fallen for that lie. But the minimum wage issue is much clearer. The Democrats are in favor of raising it, while the Republicans are opposed to raising it (and some of them would even like to lower or abolish it altogether).

The Republicans are obviously on the wrong side of the minimum wage issue. The Democrats need to beat this drum loudly and often, and keep doing it all the way to November 2014.