POLL: Buying Climate Rating Reaches a 14-Year Low

Negative ratings of the buying climate helped push consumer confidence to a fourteen-year low this week as shoppers head into the heart of the holiday season. Just 30 percent now call it a good time to spend money -- the fewest in 14 years.

The ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index stands at -24 on its scale of +100 to -100, down nine points in the last month to its lowest since May 2003, two months after the start of the Iraq War. The index has been stuck in negative double digits for 17 weeks, its longest stretch at that level since just after Hurricane Katrina.

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Consumers have faced troubling economic news lately, and initial reports indicate that good turnout on Black Friday was tempered by bargain hunting. With housing and credit markets slumping and gas above $3 a gallon, there's plenty to give retailers agita.

INDEX -- The ABC/Post CCI is based on Americans' ratings of their personal finances, the national economy and the buying climate. Positive ratings of the buying climate, at 30 percent, have fallen 6 points in the past month to their lowest since November 1993.

Thirty percent also rate the national economy positively, 18 points off its 2007 high early in the year. Ratings of personal finances, while higher as usual, are still their lowest in three months and a point off their 2007 low in late August.

TREND -- At -24, the CCI matches its level last seen May 18, 2003. It's averaged -10 this year, its best year since +4 across 2001. Its average is -9 in weekly polls since late 1985.

The index started 2007 strongly, averaging -2 in the first three months, but has done worse since, sustaining a 9-point drop in four weeks from March to April, a 12-point drop in May to June, its largest ever one-week drop of 9 points in August, and now a 9-point drop in the last four weeks.

It's ranged as high as +38, in January 2000, and as low as -50, in February 1992.

GROUPS -- As usual the CCI is higher in better-off groups. It's +2 among higher-income people while -52 among those with the lowest incomes, -12 among those who've been to college while -36 among high-school dropouts and -21 among whites but -45 among blacks. The gender gap remains wide this week, -13 among men vs. -33 among women.