POLL: Confidence Slides to a Six-Week Low

Consumer confidence dropped deeper into negative territory this week, breaking out of a narrow three-point range it'd held for the previous month.

The ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index lost four points to -17 on its scale of +100 to -100, returning to its level of six weeks ago. It's the index's 11th week of negative double digits, its worst run of 2007 and equal to its worst streak last year.

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This week's decline accompanies other economic difficulties: Gasoline prices rose by 6 cents to $2.82 per gallon, and the subprime loan fallout continues to shake the stock, credit and housing markets alike, with the Dow down 366 points last Friday.

INDEX -- The ABC/Post CCI is based on Americans' ratings of the national economy, their personal finances and the buying climate. This week 34 percent rate the economy positively, the fewest in six weeks and two points off the 2007 low in mid-August.

Thirty-four percent say it's a good time to buy things, one point off the 2007 low of 33 percent last reached in early June. As usual more, 56 percent, say their personal finances are good, but that's another six-week low.

TREND -- The index has dropped by four or more points in a single week five times this year, the most one-week slips of that size in the last six years. They included a nine-point fall to -20 in August, the biggest one-week drop since this weekly survey began in late 1985.

Despite the drops, the CCI has averaged -8 this year, on track for its best annual average since 2001. That's almost exactly its long-term average, -9, ranging from a high of +38 in January 2000 to a low of -50 in February 1992.

GROUPS -- As usual the CCI is higher in better-off groups. It's +41 among higher-income people while -59 among those with the lowest incomes, +2 among those who've been to college while -52 among high-school dropouts, -13 among whites but -40 among blacks and -7 among men vs. -26 among women.