In a tightly-contested "race", John McCain was voted by HR professionals as the most employer-friendly candidate for president, according to a recent Compensation.BLR.com poll.
When asked "If elected president, which candidate do you think would be the most employer-friendly?," John McCain received the most votes among the 506 respondents (a high voter turnout!). But McCain was not the "frontrunner" for the entire period of time that the "polls were open."
On the day the poll was activated on Compensation.BLR.com, McCain took an early lead. But throughout the course of the day, a curious flurry of activity took place, in which votes came in for Barack Obama in droves, putting him slightly ahead. (Your editors wonder if an Obama supporter may have 'spread the word' to colleagues to stuff the virtual ballot box).
As the days wore on, however (each of our polls is active/open for about one week), McCain gradually overtook Obama and was pulling away at the time the poll closed. In the end, McCain finished with 38 percent followed by 32 percent for Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton came in a distant third place with 20 percent of the votes; followed by Mike Huckabee, who actually dropped out of the race within 24 hours after BLR posted the poll question, but still managed to receive 8 percent of the votes; and Ralph Nader, who finished with just 3 percent.
Meanwhile, an active poll asking the same question on our sister site, HR.BLR.com, shows John McCain ahead by a significant margin over other candidates. As of this writing he has 49 percent of the votes followed by Obama (25 percent), Clinton (23 percent) and Nader (again with a distant 3 percent).
We invited visitors to our HR Forum to provide us insights as to why they voted as they did in our poll. Based on the few responses we received, it's possible that McCain was the top vote-getter simply because he is a Republican, and the perception is that, historically, fewer laws that regulate employers or expand employee rights are enacted under Republican administrations as opposed to Democratic ones.
We would still be happy to receive feedback from anyone who voted on this poll--or even if you didn't--as to your reasons why you think any particular candidate would be the best president for employers. You can join the discussion now here.
