NEW YORK — Small business owners are getting a little more optimistic about how their companies will do after the November election, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The National Federation of Independent Business says owners it surveyed last month expect their companies’ sales and overall business conditions to pick up after the election and the end of the year.

That brighter outlook helped lift the group’s small business optimism index by 1.7 points in August to 92.9.

The federation compiled the index from its survey of 736 of its members.

The survey still shows that business owners have a generally dim view of the current economy, said William Dunkelberg, the NFIB’s chief economist.

Still, ‘‘it could be they’re starting to see things at street level that we don’t see in the [economic] numbers’’ that come out each month, Dunkelberg said.