Who will win the entrepreneurial vote?

(FSB Magazine) -- Although Scott Hauge and Grafton Willey are both entrepreneurs, they have little in common when it comes to politics. Hauge, 57, runs Cal Insurance, a regional brokerage based in San Francisco (cal-insure.com). A registered Democrat who faces a double-digit increase in his $140,000 annual premium to insure 32 employees, he argues that health-care reform should be our next President's first domestic priority. "Small-business owners just want health insurance off their backs," he says.

Willey, 58, describes himself as a Republican-leaning independent, and what he wants off his back is the federal government. "America's entrepreneurial spirit makes us unique in the world," says Willey, part owner of the Providence accounting firm Tofias PC (tofias.com) and chair of the National Small Business Association (nsba.biz), an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. "I'm concerned when government tries to overtax and overregulate the goose that lays the golden egg."

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Like many of their fellow small-business owners, Hauge and Willey haven't yet made up their minds about the candidates. A plurality (28%) of the respondents in a recent FSB/Zogby International (zogby.com) survey of entrepreneurs chose "None/Not sure" as the candidate most likely to help small business, followed by Republican Mitt Romney (21%), and Democrat John Edwards (19%).

While it's not unusual for many voters to be undecided half a year before the first primaries, the current high rate of skepticism reflects a consensus that the candidates are making little effort to court Main Street voters. "The importance of small business is not on the table this time," huffs Willey.

Our poll suggests that more formerly centrist small-business owners are leaning leftward nowadays. The party affiliations of the entrepreneurs in our survey (37% Republican, 35% Democrat, 28% independent/minor party) still tilt more Republican than the overall population, which polls indicate has been favoring the Democrats since 2006, but 30.4% of respondents describe their politics as "progressive" or "liberal," up from 24% in a similar FSB/Zogby survey in 2004.

The proportion of moderates shrank to 22.9%, down from 30.5%, with conservatives and libertarians flat at 46.6%.

This liberal shading shows up starkly in attitudes toward health-care reform, which ranked as the top policy concern of entrepreneurs in our survey, followed by taxes and immigration.

When asked what type of health reform they wanted the next President to pursue, a plurality (34%) chose universal health insurance administered by the feds, while 29% favored consumer-driven solutions such as health savings accounts.

"Small-business owners normally fear and loathe the government," says pollster John Zogby, who has surveyed entrepreneurs regularly since 2000. "But in this instance we could be at a tipping point caused by health-care insecurity." That ought to be good news for Senator Hillary Clinton and her Democratic rivals, given that most voters tell pollsters they trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with health-care reform. However, 36% of our survey respondents picked Clinton as the candidate who would do the least for small business.

As we went to press in late August, Clinton had not yet proposed a detailed health-care plan but was working hard to distance herself from the disastrous "Hillarycare" plan of the early 1990s - defeated in large part by small business. Still, many remember the First Lady who in 1993, when asked about the burden her plan would place on small employers, was widely quoted as saying that she couldn't "go out and save every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America."

While only 39% of those surveyed rated President Bush favorably, down from 54% in 2004, the tax breaks he initiated remain popular. Only 40% listed tax reform as one of their two top issues - down from 49% in 2004.

In the wake of the failed immigration bill, reform remains a top concern among 32% of entrepreneurs. That's up sharply from 13% in 2004, with more Republicans than Democrats seeing illegal immigration as a problem.

Overall, our poll shows entrepreneurs concerned about law, order, and the bottom line - and still searching for a candidate they can trust to deliver meaningful reform.