The president’s 55 percent approval rating also matches the highest levels he has hit since his first year in the White House. | Getty Obama's approval rating reaches new high

President Barack Obama’s job approval rating hit 55 percent in a new poll released Thursday, the highest that number has been at any point during his second term in office.

The CNN/ORC poll released Thursday marks the seventh consecutive month that Obama’s job approval numbers have been above 50 percent. His job approval number is up 4 percentage points over the previous CNN/ORC poll and is up 11 points relative to a similar CNN/ORC poll conducted in mid-September, 2015. In addition to being the high-water mark for his second term, the president’s 55 percent approval rating also matches the highest levels he has hit since his first year in the White House.


The president’s rising job approval rating is thanks mostly to increasingly warm feelings towards him from Democrats in the past year, with whom his approval rating is up 12 points to 89 percent, and independents, whose approval of the president climbed 14 points to 56 percent. Over that same year-long span, the number of Republican respondents who said they approved of Obama’s job performance climbed just 2 points to 13 percent.

Obama’s approval rating has also improved with white voters in the past year, climbing from 32 percent last fall to 47 percent in the most recent poll. He’s up 8 points with Hispanic voters, to 68 percent, over that same stretch, while his 86 percent approval rating with African-American voters has stayed roughly the same.

The CNN/ORC poll was conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, reaching 1,501 adults from around the country via telephone. The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 2.5 points.

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