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........

© The Hill