Minimum Wage: 4 States Likely To Get A Wage Hike After Election Day

One of the top issues being voted on this Election day is minimum wage. Four states that are predominately Republican are likely to see hourly wage hikes when all is said and done this week.

Forbes magazine listed the states it predicts will see a wage increase. Will voters be inclined to give workers a pay raise?

Alaskan voters will decide if they want to raise the minimum wage from $7.75 to $8.75, effective January 1, 2015. The increase will be $9.75 a year after that.

In South Dakota, voters will vote yes or no on raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 by January 1, 2015.

Voters in Nebraska might elect to add another 75 cents to its minimum wage of $7.25 to make it $8 in 2015. In 2016, the amount will go to $9 an hour.

For Arkansas, the minimum wage of $6.25 could end if voters elect yes to making it $7.50 by January 1, 2015. Subsequent hikes in the wage would go to $8 in 2016 and $8.50 after that.

Illinois is also voting on a wage increase in this week’s Election. Voters will decide whether to increase it by $1.75 from $8.25 to $10 an hour on January 1, 2014.

As the report states, the majority of Americans want to have a higher minimum wage. If voters in all four states vote to increase the minim wage, it would mean 680,000 workers will have a pay increase, according to FiveThirtyEight. Eight thousand workers in Alaska would be immediately affected, Arkansas would have 26,000 impacted workers, South Dakota would have 24,000 workers affected, and 33,000 in Nebraska would be affected.

In a lot of cases, the majority of the minimum wage workers are unmarried mothers who have just a high school education.

Alaska and Arkansas are strongly believed to pass a minimum wage increase because the New York Times reports “opposition has hardly put up a fight.”

John G. Matsusaka, who’s the executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, weighs in on the vote and why it’s not being strongly opposed in the Republican.

“These groups have noticed that minimum-wage increases can easily pass — they have seen this in the past few years. They can’t get it through the legislatures in these red states, so they do it this way.”

Minimum wage increases for Alaska, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Nebraska would be under the $10 a hour amount that President Obama has urged Congress to pass.

Will these ballot measures pass on Election day? Hundreds of thousands of workers will be great affected by the minimum wage increase.

[Image via FiveThirtyEight]