Donald Trump leads the list of presidential candidates preferred by U.S. chief financial officers as being best for business, followed by Carly Fiorina, according to new data from the Duke University CFO Global Business Outlook. The survey, which closed at midnight Thursday, saw 468 U.S. finance and corporate executives select the presidential candidate they deemed would be best for their business.No single candidate received majority support. Nearly one in five U.S. CFOs (19.4 percent) said Trump would be best for their businesses, followed by 14.1 percent who favor Fiorina. Jeb Bush closely followed at 13.9 percent.John Kasich and Hillary Clinton rounded out the top five picks. A table of results is below: Q: Select the presidential candidate you think would be best for your business: Donald Trump -- 19.4 percent Carly Fiorina -- 14.1 percent Jeb Bush -- 13.9 percent John Kasich -- 9.4 percent Hillary Clinton -- 9.2 percent Scott Walker -- 6.8 percent Ben Carson -- 5.3 percent Marco Rubio -- 4.7 percent Ted Cruz -- 4.7 percent Bernie Sanders -- 3.2 percent Rand Paul -- 1.9 percent Chris Christie -- 1.7 percent Rick Perry -- 1.3 percent George Pataki -- 0.9 percent Bobby Jindal -- 0.9 percent Jim Webb -- 0.9 percent Mike Huckabee -- 0.6 percent Martin O'Malley -- 0.4 percent Rick Santorum -- 0.4 percent Lincoln Chafee -- 0.2 percent Jim Gilmore -- 0 percent Lindsey Graham -- 0 percent “This is not a survey of the average voter. These are our business leaders,” said John Graham, a finance professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and director of the survey. “It appears U.S. CFOs believe that presidential candidates with business experience would be best for their own businesses, given the backgrounds of Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina.”The Duke University CFO Global Business Outlook has been conducted for 78 consecutive quarters and spans the globe, making it the world’s longest-running and most comprehensive research on senior finance executives.Additional results from the survey are being analyzed and will be released on Thursday, Sept. 10.
