Standing in the way of what voters want.

Standing in the way of what voters want.

A new poll finds Democrats on the winning side of two major issues of 2014: unemployment aid and the minimum wage . Quinnipiac finds 71 percent support for raising the minimum wage and 58 percent support for extending emergency unemployment benefits; Democrats and independents want the unemployment extension, while 54 percent of Republicans are opposed.

Strikingly, Quinnipiac asked voters how much they'd like to see the minimum wage increased: 33 percent would prefer to raise it to $10.10, the amount named in a Democratic bill backed by President Barack Obama, while 18 percent would raise it higher. Another 18 percent would increase it from the current $7.25 an hour but not to $10.10, but given that, as Democrats push for $10.10, we're likely to be told by Republicans and pundits that it's unthinkable and laughable, let's just emphasize that: 51 percent of people in this poll want the minimum wage increased to at least $10.10. And that's despite the fact that, by a 50 percent to 45 percent margin, people polled believed the long-disproved claim that businesses will cut jobs as a result of a minimum wage increase.

Republicans are flailing and spinning, trying to disappear the inconvenient popularity of these two measures they oppose. But Quinnipiac isn't alone in finding strong support for both a minimum wage increase and the unemployment extension Republicans are right now actively in the process of blocking. Republicans need to be made to feel some pain over this.

Sign and send a petition your Republican senator or senators, demanding that they restore benefits to the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.