US Consumer Confidence tumbled again in March (March 25, 2025)
www.conference-board.org

... The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell by 7.2 points in March to 92.9 (1985=100). The Present Situation Index"based on consumers' assessment of current business and labor market conditions"decreased 3.6 points to 134.5. The Expectations Index"based on consumers' short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions"dropped 9.6 points to 65.2, the lowest level in 12 years and well below the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead. The cutoff date for preliminary results was March 19, 2025.

"Consumer confidence declined for a fourth consecutive month in March, falling below the relatively narrow range that had prevailed since 2022," said Stephanie Guichard, Senior Economist, Global Indicators at The Conference Board. "Of the Index's five components, only consumers' assessment of present labor market conditions improved, albeit slightly. Views of current business conditions weakened to close to neutral. Consumers' expectations were especially gloomy, with pessimism about future business conditions deepening and confidence about future employment prospects falling to a 12-year low. Meanwhile, consumers' optimism about future income"which had held up quite strongly in the past few months"largely vanished, suggesting worries about the economy and labor market have started to spread into consumers' assessments of their personal situations." ...

Political Independents: Who They Are, What They Think (2019)
www.pewresearch.org

... Independents often are portrayed as political free agents with the potential to alleviate the nation's rigid partisan divisions. Yet the reality is that most independents are not all that "independent" politically. And the small share of Americans who are truly independent " less than 10% of the public has no partisan leaning " stand out for their low level of interest in politics.

Among the public overall, 38% describe themselves as independents, while 31% are Democrats and 26% call themselves Republicans, according to Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 2018. These shares have changed only modestly in recent years, but the proportion of independents is higher than it was from 2000-2008, when no more than about a third of the public identified as independents. (For more on partisan identification over time, see the 2018 report "Wide Gender Gap, Growing Educational Divide in Voters' Party Identification.") ...