Trump’s Approval Rating Among Business Owners Hits All-Time High, Survey Shows

President Donald Trump leaves the Oval Office to make a statement announcing that a deal has been reached to reopen the government through Feb. 15 during an event in the Rose Garden of the White House on Jan. 25, 2019. (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

Six out of 10 small business owners approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of his job, according to a recently released survey.

CNBC and Survey Monkey started the quarterly Small Business Survey in 2017. The 60 percent approval rating is the highest in the survey’s nearly three-year history.

The lowest approval rating Trump had in the survey was the third quarter of 2017, when it was at 51 percent. Trump’s approval was below 56 percent just one other time and has stayed at 56 percent or higher since the first quarter of 2018.

The latest survey showed a three percent increase in Trump’s approval from the last quarter. Of the approval, 39 percent said they strongly approve of Trump’s handling his job as president and 21 percent said they somewhat approve. Of the 40 percent who disapprove of Trump’s job, 34 percent strongly disapprove.

The survey was conducted among 2,081 self-identified small business owners from Nov. 12 through Nov. 18. The sample included 1,029 Republicans and those who lean Republican; 751 Democrats or Independents who lean Democrat; and 269 Independents who don’t lean toward either party.

The ratings were split sharply along partisan lines—93 percent of Republican small business owners approve of Trump’s job performance versus 37 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Democrats.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk to Marine One, departing from the White House in Washington on Dec. 2, 2019. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

A majority of respondents who indicated support for Trump also said that the president getting impeached would impact their businesses. On the other hand, 70 percent of respondents who disapprove of Trump said him getting impeached would probably not impact their businesses.

“Republicans are more likely than Democrats to anticipate consequences for their businesses as a result of the impeachment,” Laura Wronski, SurveyMonkey senior research scientist, said in a statement. “Whether it’s because they view it as a political distraction that prevents people from working on real policy changes or because they’re taking it a step further and they’re concerned about Trump leaving office, we can’t say that much from these data.”

Thirty percent of respondents said that jobs and the economy matters the most to them right now, followed by 18 percent choosing healthcare and 15 percent choosing immigration.

Most respondents said the current conditions for their business are good, including 68 percent of Republicans or Republican-leaning Independents and 43 percent of Independents with no lean. Fifty-eight percent of all respondents said they expect their business’s revenue to increase in the next 12 months while only eight percent said they expect the revenue to decrease in the next year.

Other questions also bore a split along party lines. Asked if they thought changes in trade policy would have a negative effect, no effect, or a positive effect on their business, most Republican respondents said no effect or positive effect while nearly half of Democrats or Democrat-leaning respondents said “negative effect” and most of the others chose no effect.