Americans are more pessimistic about the immediate future of the
Only 25 percent of respondents said that they expected the economy to get better within the next year, according to the poll. On the other hand, 32 percent said they expected things to get worse over the next year. That's a big shift from last year, when Pew found that 44 percent of respondents were optimistic about the next year and just 14 percent were pessimistic.
Forty-one percent said they thought the economy would remain the same over the next year.
Here's a chart looking at the trend:
As a result, President
Despite that, more voters still trust Obama to handle the federal budget than Congressional Republicans — 53 percent of respondents said they had at least a "fair" amount of confidence in him, compared with just 39 percent that said the same of Republicans.