Thirty-one percent (31%) of U.S. voters say the country is heading in the right direction, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Last week, just 29% of voters felt this way, the lowest level of voter confidence in the nation’s current course so far this year. This ties the numbers for two weeks in December, and those readings marked the lowest findings since February. At the start of 2010, 32% felt the country was heading in the right direction.

The majority of voters (62%) continue to believe the nation is heading down the wrong track, a figure that's held roughly steady since mid-November of last year.

Leading up to Barack Obama’s inauguration a year ago, the number of voters who felt the country was heading in the right direction remained below 20%. The week of his inauguration, voter confidence rose to 27% and then steadily increased, peaking at 40% in early May 2009. Since then, confidence in the direction of the country has declined.

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African-American voters (64%) remain far more optimistic about the nation’s current course than whites (25%) and voters of other races (38%).

An overwhelming number of Republicans (87%) and 71% of unaffiliated voters believe the nation is heading down the wrong track. Only 10% of Republicans are confident in the nation’s current course. The latest findings echo the pessimism Republican and unaffiliateds have felt for months now.

Among Democrats, 57% say the country is heading in the right direction, while 32% say wrong track. Although the number of Democrats who say the country is heading in the right direction is up from last week, it’s hard to determine if President Obama’s January 27 State of the Union speech was the chief cause. This survey began two days before the speech and ended on January 31.

In January, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell another tenth-of-a-percentage point. Now the number of Democrats at 35.4% is the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports. The number of Republicans in the country fell, too, to 32.3%. The number of adults not affiliated with either major party is up to 32.3%, the highest number since the summer of 2007.

Republican candidates lead Democrats by seven points in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The Republicans would have to win 40 new congressional seats to take control of the House of Representatives, but 61% of voters think that’s at least somewhat likely to happen this November. Of that number, 26% say it's Very Likely. In a separate survey, 61% of voters also say it’s at least somewhat likely that the president after Obama will be a Republican, including 40% who say it’s very likely. It is important to note, however, that this question did not specify whether that president would be elected in 2012 or 2016.

One of the new initiatives in the president’s State of the Union speech is a three-year freeze on discretionary government spending, but 80% of voters believe the freeze will have little or no impact on the federal deficit.

A majority of likely voters believe decreasing the level of government spending and cutting taxes will help the U.S. economy.

Just 29% now think their next job will be better than their current one. That’s down four points since November and down four points from a year ago.

That may be one reason why only 34% of working Americans expect to be earning more a year from today. This level of optimism has been unchanged for several months now.

The Rasmussen Employment Index shows record gains for the second straight month. Recent yearly highs were also reached in the Rasmussen Consumer Index this past week, and the Discover Consumer Spending Monitor is up slightly in January.

Still, Americans continue to express little confidence in the U.S. banking system despite billions in bailout funding, but they’re not very worried about their own money in the bank.

When it comes to national security, 38% of voters say the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror. That’s the third time in the last four Rasmussen Reports tracking surveys that confidence has been below 40%.

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