Obama does even better when matched against his would-be GOP challengers. Obama up in polls, despite pessimism

There’s not a lot of confidence in the direction of the country or what President Barack Obama’s done to help the economy — but he’s gaining in popularity nonetheless.

And a slate of recent national and battleground state polls show the consequences: The president heads into his re-election campaign well ahead of where he was even a few months ago, but his improved position remains vulnerable, especially if the economy dips again.


Despite “some positives here for the president, so much depends on the trajectory of the economy over the next several months,” warned Carroll Doherty, associate director at Pew Research Center, which Monday showed Obama taking 52 percent of the vote and beating his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, by 8 percentage points.

The uptick in the economy and the ongoing GOP presidential primary fight have helped Obama’s approval ratings climb to their highest levels in national and key state polls since the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“He’s back around 50 percent, traditionally an important benchmark for presidents,” Doherty said.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll out Wednesday displayed the dichotomy: 60 percent said they think the country is doing very or pretty badly, compared to just 40 percent who said it’s doing very or fairly well. Meanwhile, Obama’s approval rating was at 50 percent, the same level he hit in a New York Times/CBS News poll released Tuesday and a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last week. His disapproval rating, meanwhile, is in the low 40’s.

Reviews of Obama’s handling of the economy are the highest they’ve been since the spring of 2010 in the Times/CBS poll, but they’re still low for a president facing reelection. Forty-four percent of those surveyed said they approve, while 50 percent disapprove. And on the economy itself, just 11 percent surveyed for the Post/ABC poll said they would rate the economy as good, while 89 percent said it’s not so good or poor.

In head-to-head national matchups against the leading GOP candidates, Obama has an edge. The race is tightest when he’s pitted against Mitt Romney, but Obama still leads him by between 6 and 8 points – just outside the margin of error but not quite a runaway — in several polls released in the last week.

That’s a marked improvement from just three weeks ago, when a Times/CBS poll had the two candidates tied at 45 percent.

Obama does even better when matched against the other Republican hopefuls in the race. In the Times poll, he leads Rick Santorum by 8 points, Ron Paul by 11 points and Newt Gingrich even more staggeringly, 54 percent to 36 percent. While Santorum has gained a little bit of ground as he surges in the GOP race, Obama’s margins against Paul and Gingrich are larger than they’ve been in recent months.

Those are modest gains, but significant ones, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“The president’s numbers have gone up a little around the country in the last few weeks” against Republican candidates, Brown said. “They’re not a lot better but a little bit better, and at the margins, that’s important.”

The path to an electoral college win remains tricky, though.

While Obama is polling ahead of his potential Republican opponents in a Quinnipiac poll of Ohio released Wednesday, he’s within the margin of error against Romney, leading by just two points. But he’s more clearly ahead of Santorum and Gingrich, leading them by 6 percentage points and 12 points, respectively.

In 2008, Obama won Ohio and North Carolina — a state where he’s neck-and-neck with the top GOP candidates in Public Policy Polling’s latest survey. In a poll released last week, he’s ahead of Romney and Santorum within the margin of error, while he leads Gingrich by 5 points and Paul by 6. Still, the president’s approval ratings in the Tar Heel State are the best they’ve been for months, with 48 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving.

In Michigan, a state that Obama won by nearly 20 points four years ago but had shown some signs of weakening in support of him because of its prolonged economic downturn, he leads Romney by 16 points and Santorum by 11 points, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey.

And though he’s no longer underwater in heavily Democratic New York, a new Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday had him at 50 percent — the same level it’s been in three surveys of the state dating back to September.

Still, he’s far ahead of the Republicans in the state. His closest competitor is Romney, whom he leads by 17 points.