Voters back minimum wage hikes, defying politics

Voters soundly rejected Democrats in Tuesday's election but embraced perhaps the most visible plank in the party's platform as they backed minimum wage hikes in four Republican-leaning states and two cities.

By January, more than half the states will have higher pay floors than the federal government. But the implications for the 2016 presidential election are unclear, with both Democratic and Republican advocates seizing on the results to buttress their case.

Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nevada and South Dakota passed ballot initiatives raising the minimum wage as high as $9.75 an hour even as they swept Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates into office.

"Even in red states the minimum wage is popular," says Arun Ivatury, senior campaign strategist for the National Employment Law Project's Action Fund.

Two California cities, Oakland and San Francisco, also supported proposals to raise their pay floors. All told, the initiatives will raise minimum hourly earnings for 609,000 low-wage workers, according to the National Employment Law Project. Voters in Illinois and several localities in Wisconsin backed non-binding proposals to raise minimum pay.

A bill, backed by President Obama, to raise the federal hourly minimum from $7.25 to $10.10 by late 2016 is stalled in Congress.

States are responding. By January, 29 states will have higher minimum wages than the USA, up from 23.

Ivatury notes that several Republican candidates in Alaska, Arkansas and Illinois were forced to back state initiatives to raise minimum wages after initially opposing the measures or declining to take a position.

The political pressure, he says, will be more intense in 2016, when minority voters will turn out in greater numbers and referendums to raise pay floors could pull Democrats to victory.

Yet on Tuesday, Democrats largely failed to use the ballot initiatives to propel their candidates to victory in Republican-leaning states such as Nebraska and South Dakota.

"Voters thought there were more important things than a higher minimum wage," says Michael Saltsman, research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute, which is backed by the restaurant industry.