Small Business Owners Presidential Candidate Survey

Small Business play a big role in the U.S. economy accounting for 54% of all U.S. sales and providing 55% of all jobs according to the Small Business Association (SBA).

When it comes to the 2016 Presidential election, their opinions and influence matter and a variety of recent polls have been conducted to get a better sense of who this demographic plans to vote for and why.

For instance, Alignable, a social network for local merchants, found that Small Business Owners (SBOs) are struggling to find a candidate to rally behind, with Trump being both the most feared Republican candidate (38%) and the most loved (29%) while Clinton is the most feared Democrat (29%) and most loved (19%). With similar results for Sanders and Cruz in both categories, it makes sense that a full 81% of SBOs believe no candidate understands their needs.

Despite this, Manta, a small business directory, polled SBOs a number of times over the last several months and got an entirely different set of results. Their results were more decisive with Trump's support among SBOs consistently growing throughout the Primary campaign. In their latest poll, 69% of SBOs said Trump is the best Republican candidate for small business and found that respondents favor Trump overall as well, followed by "undecided" and then Clinton. On the Democratic side, 56% of SBOs think Clinton is the best candidate for small business, and 40% favor Sanders.

While elections will continue through June, SBOs are rightly concerned about issues impacting their bottom lines based on the outcome of the next several months. Alignable found that increased taxes are of the greatest concern for SBOs as well as immigration and rising healthcare costs. Manta posed a similar question to its group of SBOs and very close to 50% said the economy is the most important issue this election year. Following far behind, 18.6% cited taxes, and 11.2% said healthcare cost is the most important issues to them.

Off course when small business fear an economic shift, it impacts job creation, spending and other critical areas. But Manta's SBOs indicated that 12% of respondents expect the uncertain political landscape will taint their business outlook for this year. 12% doesn't seem like much for an election that is playing out aggressively online, specifically social media, and is expected to continue to do so. This is good news for the economy, e.g. jobs, local spending, etc., because 83% of SBOs are optimistic about business prospects in 2016.

SBOs that focus on optimizing their business processes, regardless of who's residing in the White House, will be those best positioned for success in the next four years, and the many years to follow.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker