Consumer Confidence No Help to Bush

Jan. 24, 2007 — -- Consumer confidence is higher now than it was a year ago, but the change has done nothing to improve President Bush's approval rating.

The ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index stands at -3 on its scale of +100 to -100, about the same as last week. It was at -9 just ahead of last year's State of the Union address and reached a low of -19 as recently as last August.

No credit, apparently, goes to Bush, whose job rating matched its career low in a separate ABC/Post poll this week. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of his work on the economy, and 60 percent trust the Democrats more to handle it.

One likely cause for higher confidence is declining gasoline prices, down another 6 cents this week to a national average of $2.17 a gallon. It was $2.34 a year ago. Then again it was $1.47 -- and the index was +17 -- when Bush took office at this time in 2001.

INDEX -- The CCI is based on Americans' ratings of the economy, the buying climate and their personal finances. This week 46 percent rate the economy positively and 61 percent say their finances are good, each rating five points higher than a year ago. Thirty-nine percent call it a good time to buy things, about the same as last year.

TREND -- A rally in the last quarter of 2006 lifted the index into the positive range, from its 2006 low of -19 on Aug. 27 to +1 in November and December. In the last two months, the trend flattened, dipped and flattened again.

The CCI is a long way from its best days, an average of +29 in 2000 (peaking at +38 in January 2000). But it's been vastly worse -- an average of -44 in 1992, bottoming out at -50 that February.

GROUPS -- As usual, the index is higher in better-off groups -- far better, for example, among higher-income Americans, college graduates and whites. It's +2 among men and -6 among women -- a closer spread between the sexes than usual.

Huge partisan differences remain: The CCI is +36 among Republicans, -5 among independents and -28 among Democrats.

Here's a closer look at the three components of the ABC/Post CCI: