SMBs Down On US Presidential Candidates

As the political process lurches across the presidential primaries, a new survey by OnDeck, the online lending company, found that small business owners are less than optimistic about their November choices — no matter who winds up carrying the nominations and banners of their respective parties.

Of the newest findings, 34 percent of the 531 businesses surveyed “do not have confidence in any of the current candidates,” which is up from 25 percent last fall, when a similar survey was conducted.

Along with dwindling faith in those currently running, business owners expressed nostalgia (at a rate of 42 percent) for Ronald Reagan, widely perceived by those respondents to have been a friend to small business, and also for Bill Clinton (though by a smaller margin, at 17 percent) and outgoing leader Barack Obama (14 percent).

What’s important? According to those who answered the OnDeck queries, economic growth tops the list at 67 percent as a critical issue, followed by tax policy at 46 percent and health care costs at 35 percent. What they want: tax cuts at 36 percent and lower health care costs at 19 percent. There’s also exhortations to invest in infrastructure initiatives at 13 percent and curtailing boosts in the minimum wage at 13 percent, too.

Candidates should perk up their ears as nine in 10 business owners said they voted in the last presidential election, and nearly all of them, at 95 percent, are registered voters. Thirty percent made donations to candidates in the last election and roughly a quarter have donated so far in this continuing primary season.

In terms of individual candidates viewed as having the best interests of small business in mind, Donald Trump tops this list at 37 percent, followed by Bernie Sanders at 28 percent and trailed by Hillary Clinton at 16 percent.

Worries over the mindfulness of candidates toward small business was presaged by PYMNTS and its shadowing of the candidates on the trail since last month and its polling of hundreds of merchants about what they want from the next leader of the free world. As part of research for the Store Front Business Index, PYMNTS found that business owners are wary of expanding and embracing new opportunities without the perception of government support. And optimism is, at best, a regional affair, with local growth concerns trumping national ones, as evidenced by commentary and anecdotes against a backdrop of decent (but slowing) national store front creation, as the field research showed, for example, in South Carolina.