UPDATED: March 28, 2016.
The debate over raising the $7.25 federal minimum wage to $10.10 has been raging for years—so long that many now say the hike isn’t enough, and that a $15 per hour minimum wage is now necessary for a living wage. We use PRRI’s 2015 AVS to take a closer look at where Americans across the political spectrum stand on the issue.
There is large partisan agreement over raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. More than three-quarters (76 percent) of Americans favor increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour, including majorities of Democrats (91 percent) and Republicans (60 percent).
However, there is less agreement about the larger wage hike, particularly across party lines: nearly six in ten (59 percent) Americans are in favor of this raise, and Democrats (84 percent) are 52 percentage points more likely than Republicans (32 percent) to support such a raise.
In California, where lawmakers are wrestling with the decision to raise the minimum age to $15 per hour, a majority (62 percent) of the state’s residents favor increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, while roughly four in ten (38 percent) are opposed to a minimum wage increase of this magnitude. There is even greater agreement among Californians about a $10 minimum wage hike with 82 percent of the state’s residents expressing support.
Read through “Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust: Findings from the 2015 American Values Survey” here.