Americans are broadly supportive of proposals to raise the minimum wage, although they can't agree on how high it should go, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey shows.
Fifty-three percent of all Americans say that raising the minimum wage will help workers, while just a third see the idea as a negative.
Proposals to raise the minimum hourly wage to $10.10, $12 and $15 are all popular, but there's more backing for a smaller wage hike. Sixty-six percent of Americans support a $10.10 federal minimum wage; 59 percent support $12 and 48 percent support $15.
Public support for a $15 minimum has remained roughly steady since last summer, although advocates have racked up legislative victories in New York and California, which both announced plans for a minimum wage hike.
Partisan agreement also falls apart for the more ambitious proposals. While majorities of both Republicans and Democrats support an increase to $10.10, Republicans largely oppose a higher raise.
Asked which proposal they most favor, a slim 30 percent plurality of Americans said they favored a $15 minimum wage, with 28 percent preferring a smaller rise to $10.10. Another 20 percent staked out a middle ground at $12, while 18 percent want to see the minimum wage unchanged or repealed altogether.
In the Democratic presidential primary, where support for a higher minimum wage is a given, the level of increase has become an ongoing point of contention. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has made a $15 federal minimum wage a main plank of his campaign, while Hillary Clinton favors a $12 proposal.
Democrats are overwhelmingly supportive of both plans in the latest poll: 80 percent would like to see the minimum wage raised to $12 an hour, while 73 percent would like it raised to $15. When choosing from a range of options, 51 percent are most in favor of raising the minimum wage to $15, while 24 percent prefer $12, 18 percent favor $10.10 and less than 5 percent want to see it kept at $7.25 or abolished entirely.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted April 8-10 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
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