EAST LANSING – As the nation elected a new president, Michigan citizens were as uneasy about the economy as they had been in more than a decade, the latest State of the State Survey shows.

Michigan citizens described their financial circumstances in the weakest terms in the survey’s 15 years, said Charles Ballard, Ph.D., MSU economics professor and State of the State Survey director.

“Our state’s overall mood during this time was one of considerable anxiety,” Ballard said of the telephone survey.

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Just 3.6 percent called their personal finances “excellent.” Less than 40 percent of those surveyed described their finances as “excellent” or “good.”

A bright note: Slightly more than half of those answering the survey said they expected a better year ahead, Ballard said. The percentage expressing a positive outlook was higher than in three of the four previous surveys.

During the final four months of 2008, including the Nov. 8 presidential election, the nations recession deepened and broadened, Ballard noted.

The U.S. posted average job losses of almost 470,000 per month at that time. Michigan’s job losses during the period were about 36,000 per month, Ballard said.

The stock market declined sharply and housing prices continued to fall. “Middle-income residents saw deterioration in the values of their biggest assets – their investments and their homes,” he added.

Asked whether they were better off or worse off than the year before, citizens cast their circumstances as the worst since the survey’s launch in 1994, Ballard said.

“Only 13.6 percent said they are better off than a year before, which is an all-time low. On the other hand, 63.9 percent say they are worse off than a year before, which is an all-time high,” Ballard said.

When asked to measure the performance of President George Bush and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Michigan citizens gave them ratings that have tended to decline with the economy, Ballard said.

After reaching an all-time low in the first few months of 2008, Granholm�??s ratings have stabilized and improved. Bush’s ratings peaked immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and then fell.

In the fall of 2008, only 1.8 percent of Michigan’s citizens rated Granholm’s performance as “excellent.” In the latest survey, she won a 25 percent combined “excellent” and “good” grade, up from a low of 20 percent in the winter of 2008.

This higher rating came as Michigan’s economy continued to decline, Ballard noted. “One possible explanation for this is that the financial crisis that gripped the country in the fall of 2008 is widely seen as having its roots on Wall Street and in Washington, rather than in Michigan.”

Bush’s ratings at election time were the worst of his presidency.

Nearly 14 percent of those answering the latest survey gave Bush an “excellent” or “good rating,” an all-time low. About 59 percent of them rated his performance as “poor,: an all-time high, Ballard said.

One slightly brighter note in the ratings for the outgoing president is that 3.3 percent of the respondents rated his performance as “excellent.” This is from his all-time low of 2.2 percent, registered in the previous survey.

The quarterly survey was founded in 1994. It has consistently asked Michigan residents to rate their governors, their presidents and their economic well-being since that time.

It is sponsored by MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and conducted by IPPSR’s Office for Survey Research.

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