Nearly half of small business owners (47 percent) plan to vote for a second term for the president, compared to 39 percent who plan to vote for Mitt Romney, according to a new poll conducted by the George Washington University School of Political Management and Thumbtack.com. Even more importantly, perhaps, the president is perceived as more supportive of small companies by the most coveted group of voters — independents.

Mitt Romney has made President Barack Obama's supposed disrespect for business owners a cornerstone of his campaign over the past month, but it doesn't seem to be having much of an effect. According to a new poll, Obama holds a solid lead over Romney among small business owners:That's in contrast to a poll done by Manta in August, which found Romney with a large lead. Both polls were conducted online among members of competing small business-focused websites—Thumbtack and Manta—so all the caveats that go with online polls and hard-to-poll groups of people apply here. That said, the new poll surveyed more than three times as many people and was done with George Washington University collaboration.

Respondents to the Thumbtack-GWU poll, more than 95 percent of whom had 10 or fewer employees, listed the economy, and especially unemployment and the job market, as their top concern, ahead of partisanship. Just 3 percent said taxes were their top issue.