President Barack Obama’s upbeat analysis of the nation’s economic progress in his Jan. 12 State of the Union speech may have helped lift the weekly Economic Confidence Index five points to -7. That gain disappeared last week, with the index returning to -12. Nearly all the movement over the past three weeks has come among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, particularly in their outlook for the economy.
After reaching a historical high of +5 in January 2015, weekly economic confidence slowly fell, reaching a yearly low of -17 in late August 2015. After that low point, weekly Economic Confidence Index averages stayed within a narrow range of -10 to -15 for the rest of the year.
Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index is the average of two components: how Americans rate current economic conditions and whether they think the economy is improving or getting worse. After increasing sharply, both conditions dropped in the most recent reading.