POLL: Confidence Continues in Negative Double Digits

Consumer confidence stabilized this week after a four-point drop a week ago, but it remains in negative double digits for a 12th consecutive week -- its longest run at that level since an 18-week stretch in late 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At -15 on its scale of +100 to -100, the ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index matches its level six weeks ago as it slowly recovered from a record nine-point, one-week drop to -20 in August. It's well below its 2007 average, -9.

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Economic news has not been encouraging. Beyond the shaken credit and housing markets, the price of gasoline has jumped by 11 cents a gallon in the last two weeks to $2.87, its highest since late July, as crude oil prices set a nominal record.

INDEX -- The ABC/Post CCI is based on Americans' ratings of the national economy, their personal finances and the buying climate. Personal finances, as usual, are rated more favorably -- this week 58 percent say theirs are good, essentially the same as the average this year and the long-term average in weekly polls since December 1985.

Ratings of the economy and the buying climate are softer: Thirty-four percent rate the economy positively, two points off the year's low in mid-August; and 36 percent say it's a good time to buy things, three points off the 2007 low in early June.

TREND -- Even with its recent slump, the CCI's average so far this year, -9, is its best since it averaged +4 in 2001. It's ranged this year from a high of +2 in March to a low of -20 in August. Over its lifetime the index has ranged as high as +38, in January 2000, and as low as -50, in February 1992. Its long-term average is -9, same as its 2007 average.

GROUPS -- As usual the CCI is higher in better-off groups. It's +40 among higher-income people while -65 among those with the lowest incomes, -1 among those who've been to college while -35 among high-school dropouts, -10 among whites but -43 among blacks and -8 among men vs. -20 among women.