Greater Des Moines consumers are more optimistic that local business conditions will improve over the next six months than they were in the first quarter, but remain more pessimistic about the strength of the local economy than U.S. residents as a whole, according to a new survey released Tuesday by the Des Moines Metropolitan Advisory Council (MAC).

MAC representatives and regional chambers of commerce joined partners of the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s “I Believe” campaign yesterday to announce the survey results, and afterwards signed a “proclamation of belief in the future prosperity of Greater Des Moines.”

According to the Harvest Omnibus Survey of Des Moines area consumers for the second quarter, 52 percent of respondents said current business conditions are “worse than normal,” compared with 62 percent in the first quarter. Forty-one percent said local business conditions are “normal,” compared with 31 percent in the previous quarter. The local assessment of the current economy was more pessimistic than the national survey, in which 46 percent of respondents nationwide ranked business conditions “worse than normal” and 46 percent ranked them “normal.”

Perceptions of the economic outlook for the next six months were more optimistic than the national average, however, and appeared to have improved somewhat compared with findings from the first quarter of 2009. Forty-one percent said they expect business conditions will “get better” in the next six months, compared with 30 percent in the first quarter, while the percentage saying conditions will “worsen” dropped from 33 percent to 20 percent.

“We’ve watched other areas of the country suffer huge economic swings, first upward and then downward,” said Bob Andeweg, 2009 MAC chairman and Urbandale mayor. “We can’t help but feel fortunate that our local impact has seemed so much more manageable by comparison.”

The consumer confidence model is a leading economic indicator and benchmark for evaluation of the economic condition from a descriptive and policy standpoint. The localized version of this research will continue to be tracked by Harvest Research, with a quarterly survey of 300 Des Moines area households with sampling based on U.S. Census demographics for the region.