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Whether the nation's economy has gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse over the past year.
Latest: 59% answered “Worse” in CES, 2025.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. ANES → mixed mode (2012).
Shares of everyone asked, including non-answers. Each column is one survey wave, evenly spaced rather than to scale in time; hover for exact shares.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. ANES → mixed mode (2012).
Shares of everyone asked, including non-answers. Each point is one survey wave at the middle of its field period. Lines from different surveys are never spliced together.
Groups differ from everyone by 17 points on average across all answers, in CES.
| Line | Question | Match | How answers map |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANES | National economy better or worse over past year How about (1996-LATER: Now thinking about) the economy (1990,1994- later: in the country as a whole)?
ALL YEARS EXC. 2000 VERSION 2:
Would you say that over the past year the nation’s economy has gotten better, stayed (all yrs. exc 1984: about) the same or gotten worse?
2000 VERSION 2:
Would you say that over the past year the nation’s economy has gotten worse, stayed about the same, or gotten better? | identical | Better → Better; Stayed same → Same; Worse → Worse |
| CES | National economy better or worse over the past year OVER THE PAST YEAR the nation’s economy has ... ? Caveat: Large web panel; 5-point scale collapsed. | equivalent | Gotten much better → Better; Gotten better / somewhat better → Better; Stayed about the same → Same; Gotten worse / somewhat worse → Worse; Gotten much worse → Worse |
Groups differ from everyone by 6 points on average across all answers, in CES.
Subgroup charts are picked automatically. Of every breakdown in the data (party, ideology, age, sex, race, education, income, region, religion, and community type), these two put their groups furthest from everyone’s answers: the gap is averaged across all answer categories and waves, with each group weighted by its share of respondents. Party and ideology count as one choice, so the second chart shows a different kind of split. Groups with an effective sample under 50 in a wave are left out of that wave.