LANSING – Michigan residents are slightly less confident about their personal economics than they were earlier in the year, the most recent State of the State Survey shows, though a larger number of respondents felt they were better off today than a year ago.

Most also felt they would be better still in another year, although the percentage of those who felt they would be worse off increased slightly.

The survey results, which were gathered from 978 respondents from August 24 to October 27, also showed support for President Barack Obama’s performance had fallen, especially in the wake of the botched Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rollout and the federal government shutdown.

The survey showed support for Governor Rick Snyder’s performance had improved, but still fewer than 36 percent of those polled thought he was doing a good or excellent job.

With the economy still in a slow-growth mode, the number of respondents who saw their financial position as either excellent or good slipped. In the survey conducted in the spring, close to 58 percent said their personal financial status was either good or excellent. That was the highest such expression of confidence in more than a decade.

By the latest survey, that confidence had slipped to under 50 percent, and was slightly lower than the number of people who said their circumstances were good or excellent a year ago.

The number of people who felt they were better off than the year before fell slightly to 35.6 percent, compared to about 38 percent in the spring. The number of people who felt they were worse off stood at 33 percent, about the same as the spring.

However tepid the respondents were about the current economy, they were still largely upbeat about the future. By a margin of more than two to one, respondents felt they would be better off in a year’s time, 54.2 percent to 26.1 percent.

Still, the number of people feeling they would be worse off rose slightly from the spring, when it stood at about 22 percent. The number who felt they would be better off also increased, but not by as much.

In terms of support for Obama, the number of people who felt he was doing a good or excellent job fell to 39.3 percent compared to his most recent high of more than 41 percent last winter.

In the president’s case, his favorability ratings were dramatically affected by the problems with the rollout of the online signup for the ACA and the short-lived partial government shutdown. Of the respondents asked before October 1, Obama had a favorability rating of 41.4 percent, but just a 34 percent favorability rating among those asked after.

Snyder saw his highest overall approval rating, at 35.6 percent, in more than a year. That still leaves him below the 44.5 percent approval rating he had when he first took office in the winter of 2011.

Snyder faces re-election in November 2014.

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