Marquette Poll Shows Wisconsinites Favor Increasing Minimum Wage, Taxes On Wealthy

A new Marquette University poll shows a majority of Wisconsinites support taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage.

Last week, Marquette University pollsters asked 800 registered Wisconsin voters some questions on taxes. One finding involved the tax cuts often proposed and occasionally delivered, especially by state Republicans.

Marquette Professor Charles Franklin said Gov. Scott Walker’s latest tax cut proposals came too late to be included in the poll, but Franklin said 59 percent of respondents said it seems that tax cuts are primarily benefiting the wealthy.

“We’re not really talking about things that are necessarily benefiting the significant majority of the public,” Franklin said. “We’re seeing a public developing the view that those benefits are not going to them, but are going to other people.”

Franklin cautions that a poll last fall showed most people did approve the income and property tax cuts that passed last year.

But looking ahead, in order to further lower property taxes, Franklin said the new poll shows 64 percent of respondents are in favor of raising income taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year.

“Folks that are, in a purely accounting sense, better off than a substantial majority of the public,” he said.

As another nod to people at the lower end of the economic spectrum, Franklin said the poll shows 62 percent of Wisconsin residents want the minimum wage raised. After being told the current minimum is $7.25 an hour, 73 percent wanted to hike the minimum wage to at least $9 an hour.