WASHINGTON – The bank account is thin, but the future looks pretty good.
A whopping 82 percent are optimistic about what the new year will bring for their families, according to the latest AP-GfK poll. Nearly two-thirds think their family finances will worsen or stay about the same next year. And fewer than half think the nation’s economy will improve in 2010, even though Americans rated 2009 as a huge downer.
Flanigan, 36, is unemployed after selling a family business that faced increasing competition.
The poll found that nearly three-fourths of Americans think 2009 was a bad year for the country, which was rocked by job losses, home foreclosures and economic sickness. Forty-two percent rated it “very bad.”
The survey that year found that 58 percent of Americans felt the nation had suffered a bad year, and 39 percent considered it a good year.
Behind the gloominess, however, are more hopeful views that seem to reflect Americans’ traditional optimism or, perhaps, wishful thinking.
Some 72 percent of Americans said they’re optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country. Millions of Americans saw their savings or retirement accounts shrink, and many are rethinking how long they will have to work, and where they might find income.
Marcia Andrews of Blairsville, Pa., was a high school nurse until budget cuts eliminated her job.
Preliminary FBI figures for the first half of 2009 showed crime falling across the nation, with robberies down by 6.5 percent.

Americans are not optimistic, however, about the nation’s two wars. Thirty-one percent think the situation in Afghanistan will get better, while 67 percent think it will stay the same or get worse. Only 10 percent of Republicans said 2009 was a good year, compared with about one-third of Democrats and independents. A robust 87 percent of Democrats are optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country, compared with 53 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents.

People’s views of their personal circumstances divide along partisan lines, too.

Only one in five Republicans think their family’s finances will improve in 2010. Nearly half of Democrats and 40 percent of independents hold that view.

Steve Bishop, 59, of Middletown, Calif., said he’s pleased the government is trying to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

H. June Clark, a Republican retiree in Fort Wayne, Ind., is not as cheery. Some family members are still out of work, she said.

Clark thinks the nation is headed toward socialism, and she wants a wholesale change in elected officials, no matter their party affiliation.

“I don’t care if we get independents, populists, whatever. The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 10-14 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media and involved landline and cell phone interviews of 1,001 adults nationwide. AP-GfK poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

___

Associated Press writers Dennis Junius, Natasha Metzler, Ann Sanner and Trevor Tompson contributed to this report.

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