LANSING – Michigan residents are a tiny bit more optimistic about the future of business conditions in the next year, but they have never been so gloomy about their own current state, a new survey shows.

The latest results from the State of the State Survey, conducted by the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, also showed public approval in President George W. Bush fell to new historic lows while approval of Governor Jennifer Granholm increased by a smidgen, though more than three quarters of those polled did not give her high rankings.

The latest iteration of the survey, which has been conducted quarterly since 1994, questioned 1,008 Michigan residents from May 15 through July 16. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.

The survey found that 57.3 percent of those questioned felt they were worse off now than they were a year ago. That is the highest percentage of those questioned who have ever indicated that level of pessimism about their current condition.

In the last state survey, released in May, 56.3 percent of those polled said they were worse off than the year before.

The study also found that 42.3 percent of those questioned believe they will be worse off a year from now, compared to 39.4 percent who thought they would be better off. It is the first time in the survey’s history that more people questioned thought they would be worse off than better off in the next year.

In the spring survey, 43.9 percent of those questioned thought they would be better off a year from then while only 34.8 percent thought they would be worse off.

Despite that, those questioned were not quite as pessimistic about business conditions during the next 12 months. In the spring survey, 67.9 percent of those questioned thought business conditions would get worse in the next year while only 21.2 percent thought they would improve.

In the summer survey, 65.6 percent thought business conditions would get worse in the next year while 26 percent thought conditions would improve.

Politically, neither of the two top leaders got high marks from those questioned. In fact, only 17.4 percent of those questioned approved of Bush’s performance compared to 24.1 percent in the spring.

In contrast, 24.1 percent of those questioned gave Granholm approval, a slight improvement over her 20 percent ranking in the spring.

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