Democrat Katie McGinty wants to give Pennsylvania minimum wage workers a raise

The Pennsylvania Senate race is a close one, although Katie McGinty has been leading Pat Toomey by an average of 3.25 percent since August. In the final stretch, she’s focused on economic policy—a key concern of Pennsylvania voters, on which she and her opponent Pat Toomey have stark disagreements.

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On Friday, McGinty got an assist from Bernie Sanders, who campaigned with her at Carnegie Mellon University. “Our job is to elect Katie, our job is to elect Secretary Clinton, [and] our job is to transform the United States of America,” he said.

To that end, McGinty hammered home her economic message, saying: “None of this is politics or academics. This is about families.”

A key part of her platform is support for the minimum wage, which has major implications for millions of working people and families. And it’s a crucial issue to voters: The most recent PPP poll [pdf] found that 43 percent of voters who know McGinty supports raising the federal minimum wage are much more likely to vote for her.

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And 41 percent of voters who know Toomey has repeatedly opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage are much less likely to vote for him.

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In 2015, 150,000 workers in Pennsylvania earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 or even less. For those workers, there is only one candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate race who wants to give them a raise—and it’s Katie McGinty.