A recent study from Stanford University and King’s College London published in July by the British Journal of Political Science revealed something that is probably not a surprise to most people familiar with small business in America: people who own businesses lean to the political right.
“Leveraging diverse sources of data — representative surveys from around the world, campaign finance records, voter files, and a first-of-its-kind, bespoke survey of small business owners — we find consistent evidence that small business owners are more likely to identify with and vote for right-wing parties,” the study’s authors wrote. “The experience of being a small business owner leads people to adopt conservative views on government regulation.”
Is that a surprise? Not really. For more than 20 years I’ve written about small-business owners and have run my own small business, and none of this is news to me.
For starters, I speak to more than 50 trade and industry conferences a year on public policy, economic and technology issues impacting businesses. The audiences I speak to range from 200 to sometimes more than 5,000 people. And who are they? Mostly business owners (and mostly middle-aged white men too, but that’s another story for another day).
These are good and smart people. They have quietly and successfully run businesses in places you may never have heard of, often through multiple decades and involving many generations of workers and family. And although I tend to avoid politics in my presentations, it’s not difficult to read the room. Most are Republicans and most voted for Donald Trump. This gets validated from the conference leaders and individual attendees I speak with before and after.
I also know this because I sometimes provide services to start-up companies. The owner of one start-up is a good example of the typical business owner I see. She taught math for over 15 years in a local school system. She left to start a nonprofit that provides specialized tutoring for advanced students. Like most educators I meet, she’s a lifelong Democrat — and she still is., but she’s wavering.
I have watched her become harder, angrier and more stressed as the responsibilities and tasks of running a business weigh down on her. “I spend more time negotiating insurance, talking to my lawyer and accountant and dealing with employee issues than I do teaching math,” she recently told me.
Are the Republicans so much better than Democrats for business? Some economic reports have shown that the economy is better historically under Democratic presidents. Some Republican policies — hello, tariffs — are causing significant angst for many business owners. Under the Biden administration, the Small Business Administration doubled down on its efforts to provide more loans to small businesses and support minority startups. So why the disconnect? Why the right-leaning sentiment?
I can provide some context.
One reason has to do with risk. When you run a business, you are the one taking the risk. You’re not getting a paycheck. You can’t just go home and forget about it. You can’t take a vacation without keeping in touch. You are responsible for everything all the time. You are making decisions with your money that affect the people — employees, customers, partners, suppliers — who rely on your business. You desire political leaders who will help mitigate your risk, not increase it.
Government regulations increase the risk of you inadvertently doing something illegal or breaking some rule, and this makes it harder for you to operate your business. Government rhetoric that gives more power to workers creates more risk that you will lose valuable talent or be forced to incur more costs. Business owners gravitate toward those politicians who reduce their risk rather than add to it.
There’s also control. People leave their jobs to start businesses not just because of their passion or entrepreneurial drive, but also because they want more power over their own lives. I can assure you that running a business takes more time and commitment than clocking in to a job. But you also get more say over when and where you spend that time without reporting to an unreasonable boss. You also have more control over the money you spend and generate and the decisions you make. Any interference or challenges to that control is against your best interests.
Fear plays a big part in driving business owners to the right. As mentioned above, we’re taking risks. My best clients — owners who have been running companies for decades — are fearful that the cliff they see at the end of their 90-day backlog of orders is real and that no new orders will come in. This keeps them up at night. They are afraid of all the things they can’t control — interest rates, inflation, economic growth, taxes, labor policies. They fear governments that increase their administrative burdens, limit where and how they can do business, and overtax the profits they work so hard to generate.
Finally, business owners, though optimistic and opportunistic, are also generally wary and untrusting. My non-profit math friend learned the hard way that people lie. Employees don’t show up for work, service providers don’t deliver as promised and customers don’t pay. When you have enough people lie to you for a long enough period of time, you start to doubt everyone you work with.
Like the rest of us, they know that politicians lie for a living. Tax cuts, economic growth, grants and investments are promised and then never materialize. All things being equal, they would rather hear less from their government leaders than believe in promises that are often broken.
In the end, business is about perception. Despite all of their shortcomings, right-leaning politicians give the perception that they are pro-business. Those on the left give the perception that they are pro-worker. Business owners will lean towards those who generally reduce their risks, allay their fears and give them more control over their decisions. If you want to win over the hearts (and votes) of the more than 30 million small-business owners in the U.S., you have to address these concerns.
Gene Marks is founder of The Marks Group, a small-business consulting firm.
