US President Barack Obama has ridden a surge of support this month to reclaim an approval rating above the symbolic 50-percent threshold for the first time since mid-2009, a new poll has found. On the two-year anniversary of Obama's historic inauguration, a growing number of Americans see the US economy improving in coming years, but also voiced mounting concern about the stubbornly high unemployment rate, now at 9.4 percent.
According to Thursday's Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Obama's approval rating surged to 53 percent, a whopping eight points higher than in December, when an end-of-session US Congress saw Obama shift to the center to earn key bipartisan legislative achievements including passage of a landmark arms reduction treaty with Russia.
The across-the-board rating improvements also saw the Democratic Party enjoy a net-positive rating, and will see the president ride into his State of the Union speech later this month in a better position than many analysts had predicted as his Republican foes took control of the House of Representatives in early January. "The last six weeks have been the best six weeks the president has had in his first two years in office," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with a Republican pollster.
In early January, Labour Department data showed the unemployment rate declined from 9.8 percent in November to 9.4 percent last month, and the president on January 12 delivered a well-received speech at a memorial for victims of the deadly Arizona shooting.
Comments
Comments are closed.