Poll puts Obama approval rating at 69 percent

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Nearly seven in 10 Americans approve of the way President Barack Obama is doing his job, giving him enormous political capital as he pushes Congress to give him unprecedented tools to fight economic crisis, according to a new McClatchy/Ipsos poll.

Obama outpolls Congress by more than 30 points, and he also can point to an uptick in the number of people who think the country’s headed in the right direction even as a majority thinks the worst is yet to come in the economy.

The survey found that 69 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance — with a robust 38 percent “strongly” approving.

At the same time, 26 percent disapprove of the way he’s doing his job, with 12 percent “strongly” disapproving.

Notably, the solid approval was recorded Feb. 6-9, after Obama admitted that he “screwed up” in the ill-fated nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle to be health and human services secretary. Daschle withdrew under a torrent of criticism for tax problems. The survey of 1,042 adults has an error margin of plus or minus 3.04 percentage points; a subset of 841 registered voters has an error margin of plus or minus 3.38 percentage points.

The poll underscores the most potent weapon Obama has as he presses Congress not only to approve a proposed $789.5 billion plan to stimulate the economy, but also perhaps to approve hundreds of billions of dollars more to shore up the nation’s banking system.

Americans are by no means convinced, however, that Obama has yet solved perilous problems in banking or any other part of the economy.

A majority — 54 percent — think that the worst is yet to come in the economy. An additional 35 percent think the situation has stabilized but not yet started to improve. Just 7 percent think the economy has turned the corner.