To commemorate the first debate in the 2012 Presidential Election this Wednesday, we have scoured the Web to see how small business owners are going to vote and how the election has influenced their decisions and outlook over the last year. The illustration below is a compilation of a number of different surveys taken over the last several months … feel free to grab the code below and put this infographic on your site:

<a href="https://blog.planningpod.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://jeffk11.sg-host.com//wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2102electionandsmallbusiness-1.jpg" alt="Big Picture on Small Business and the 2012 Election"></a><p>The Big Picture to Small Business and the 2012 Election - An infographic from Planning Pod - the online <a href="http://www.planningpod.com/" target="_blank">small business management software</a> app for managing projects, people, tasks, billing, contacts and more.</p>

A few trends we discovered as we sorted through these stats:

1. Not all survey are alike – A few polls showed heavy support for Mitt Romney among business owners, while a few others showed Barack Obama had a slight lead. Akin to some national polls and state polls targeting the general voting public, this collection of polls showed a pretty wide variance when it came to which candidate small business owners support.

2. Small business owners have very measured optimism regarding the economy – Although some of the findings do show small business owners are somewhat optimistic about the post-election economy, their optimism is definitely reserved, which is evident in their unwillingness to make any big decisions before the election and to wait on many hiring decisions until after the election.

3. Small businesses don’t believe government is on their side – Although many small business owners reach out to their representatives in government, many feel as if government isn’t meeting their needs and that it is becoming less and less capable of helping them.

4. There is much uncertainty about healthcare – It’s the number one issue for small business owners in this election, and yet many of them are uncertain of exactly how the new healthcare initiatives work or if they will be of benefit to small businesses.

Much thanks to the following sources:

1 George Washington University / Thumbtack.com Small Business Political Sentiment Survey. Nathan Allen and Sander Daniels. September 2012.
http://www.thumbtack.com/resources/politics-2012/GWU-Thumbtack-Political-Sentiment-Survey.pdf
2 Manta Political Poll Survey. August 21, 2012.
http://www.manta.com/media/political_survey_4_082112
3 Office Depot SMB National Tracking Study. August 2012.
http://investor.officedepot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=94746&p=irol-reportsother
4 Wave Accounting Small Business Opinions Report: 2012 Presidential Election. August 2012.
http://www.waveaccounting.com/Small-Businesses-vote-Romney-2012/
5 Yahoo! Small Business Advisor/IpsosMediaCT Poll. July 2012.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/romney-leads-with-small-business-owners-as-healthcare-issue-splits-parties.html
6 National Small Business Association. The Politics of Small Business. October 2011.
http://www.nsba.biz/?p=2666
7 2012 U.S. Bank Small Business Annual Survey. May 30, 2012.
http://usbankconnect.com/run-your-business/business/connect-article/2012-05-29-2012-us-bank-small-business-annual-survey
8 Sage Small Business Sentiment Study. August 2012.
http://www.sagenorthamerica.com/~/media/Category/SNA/Assets/Documents/Sage%202012-SB-Study.pdf