Sixty-four percent of small business owners approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president, the highest approval rating for Trump among entrepreneurs since CNBC and SurveyMonkey began conducting a quarterly survey in 2017.

The spike in approval among small business owners follows a pivotal period for Trump. This CNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey for the first quarter 2020 — which includes responses from more than 2,100 small business owners — was conducted the same week (Feb. 3–Feb. 10) as Trump's third State of the Union address, his impeachment acquittal and the Iowa caucuses. The percentage of small business owners who say they "strongly approve" of how Trump is handling his job reached 47%, also a new high; it had never been above 40% in previous surveys.

"This is a high watermark for President Trump's job approval, both among small business owners in our survey and among the general public," said SurveyMonkey senior research scientist Laura Wronski.

A recent Gallup poll found Trump's job-approval rating had risen to 49%, his highest in Gallup polling since he took office in 2017.

Small business owners are a consistent source of support for Trump, according to the CNBC|SurveyMonkey data — 60% approved of Trump's handling of his job in Q4 2019. It was 56% one year ago when the government shutdown weighed on his support from the small business community.

"Part of this is just partisanship," Wronski said. "One key way in which small business owners differ from everyone else is that they are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats by a pretty wide margin. That's not true among the general population, which is split almost evenly and even slightly skewed to the Democratic side. Trump's job-approval numbers are consistently higher among small business owners than they are in national polls, solely thanks to the fact that many more small business owners are Republicans than Democrats."

A huge percentage (93%) of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing this quarter, and it was the same in Q4 2019.

A 6% spike among small business owners who identify as political Independents influenced the Trump approval bump in Q1. Quarter-over-quarter, Trump's job approval increased the most — from 37% to 43% — among these small business owners.