President Obama and the rest of the Democrats are pushing the minimum wage hike issue hard this week — and why wouldn’t they? It is one of the few issues they have right now that polls really well, with most surveys finding upwards of 60 percent to 70 percent of people backing it. Surely that means a huge groundswell of support, right?

Maybe not. A closer look at the polls shows that support for an increase has actually fallen, compared to previous years. A January Pew Research Center survey found that 73 percent supported raising the minimum, but Pew’s prior surveys put the total support at 84 percent as recently as 2007. In 2001, it was 87 percent.