I wish I could agree with dumping support for IE8, anyone designing a new site in 2014 should not have to worry about this junk browser.
But, it is only 4 years old since it's public release in 2009. According to my recent check of Browser statistics it still holds almost 10% of the total market share.
Don't get me wrong, I seriously dislike IE in general. But I find it hard to dump support for it yet. IE7 and 6 are dead, but IE8 is still kicking. Of course, depending on where you look for browser data, you will get very different results.
According to this site:
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php IE8 is in the top 4 browsers. I find that consistently it is in the top 4, though its percentage market share fluctuates widely depending on the source.