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Gallup Poll: Americans Still Losing Faith in Economy

Aired August 27, 2002 - 14:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Americans are feeling a little less confidence about the economy these days. This is being examined very closely because how we feel largely behind how much we spend.
Frank Newport is editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. He joins us from Princeton, where he has hashed out all the numbers, as usual. He is our number guy.

Hi -- Frank.

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Hello, Kyra.

Indeed, you know, by this point, we thought maybe we would be seeing somewhat of an increase in how Americans look at the economy. After all, the stock market has been up the last couple of weeks and there has not been devastating economic news. But, latest reading really doesn't look good at all. Let me show you the numbers here.

This is a basic question: Just rate the economy. A very simple question we asked Americans. We give them four choices: excellent, good, only fair or poor. This dark green line there shows the percent of Americans -- that's like the good cholesterol, that is the good rating, and notice how it really fell off after 2000. Right over here it tried to come back up again, but boy, in our most recent reading, it is down -- I'll tell you a little more about this in a minute -- as low as we have seen it since 1994. This white line is the bad line, and you can see how that has gone up, particularly more recently.

Let me zoom in our last reading, which was as of last week. These are the four categories. Nobody thinks it is excellent. Good -- just 23 percent of Americans are willing to use that adjective. Zoom over here to the right-hand side, when we have the adjective poor, 28 percent. And this is the point: We have more people now rating the economy poor than rate it excellent or good combined. And as I mentioned, that is the first time, Kyra, since April of 1994 that we have had that phenomenon happen.

Generally speaking, when Americans say how is it today, they are just not positive at all -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: So what do you think? Did the folks think that the economy has just bottomed out?

NEWPORT: Well, there is a little more volatility in a measure that asks something similar to what you mentioned, is the economy getting better or is it getting worse? That number kind of goes up and down, and again, the green is the getting better -- that is the good. Right here was the spring of this year, March and April, and the getting better actually was higher than the getting worse. Then the negative would come back up. This last reading, it's about 38 percent who say it is getting better -- a little better, actually, than it was a couple of weeks ago.

But I would say, Kyra, all in all, still no great sense of optimism from the American consumer. We are just not seeing it yet. Despite the stock market and perhaps some other things, your average American out there across this broad land of ours just thinks economy is semi in the tank at this point.

PHILLIPS: Frank Newport, not very good. Maybe we'll have a better one next time.

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