http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/barack-obama-approval-ratings-poll-114258.html?hp=b1_r1Poll: Barack Obama approval rating ticks upward
By Lucy McCalmont
1/14/15 3:21 PM EST
Updated 1/14/15 3:45 PM EST
President Barack Obama’s approval rating is on the rise as Americans’ views of the economy improve, a poll released Wednesday suggests.
Obama’s job approval rating has jumped 5 points, to 47 percent, since December, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, while his disapproval rating stayed high, at 48 percent. Last January, Obama’s approval rating in the poll was 43 percent, and his numbers lingered in the low 40s throughout most of 2014.
Americans’ improving views of the president come as their sentiments about the economy are also improving. For the first time in five years, more Americans said Obama’s economic policies have made things better rather than worse — 38 percent versus 28 percent. Thirty percent said his policies have had no effect.
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Twenty-seven percent of Americans said economic conditions are excellent or good — up from 16 percent in January 2014. Nearly 50 percent said economic conditions are fair, and while 16 percent said the economy is recovering strongly, 66 percent agree there is an economic recovery, but “not so strongly.”
Obama’s 47 percent approval rating at the start of his seventh year puts him between former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who saw 63 percent and 33 percent approval ratings, respectively, at the same point in their terms. Obama’s numbers are comparable to those of former President Ronald Reagan, whose approval rating was at 49 percent as he headed into his penultimate year in the White House.
Pew’s numbers reinforce a string of polls last month that showed the president’s ratings improving as he headed to Hawaii for his Christmas vacation.
The Pew poll was conducted Jan. 7-11 and surveyed 1,504 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
