Obama’s approval rating has stayed unchanged from Quinnipiac’s last poll a month ago. Poll: Obama tops GOP on economy

A majority of U.S. voters give a thumbs down to President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy, but they trust him more than congressional Republicans to get the country back on track — and favor his approach to trimming the nation’s debt, a poll out Thursday finds.

Fifty-six percent of voters say in the new Quinnipiac University poll that they disapprove of how the president is handling the economy, while 38 percent approve.


Even so, 45 percent trust the president more than Republicans on the economy, while 38 percent trust the Republicans more.

As negotiations to raise the debt ceiling have intensified and the president has taken on a larger role in fighting for them in public and in private, Obama’s approval rating has stayed unchanged from Quinnipiac’s last poll a month ago with 47 percent of voters approving of his job performance and 46 percent disapproving.

If there’s no deal to raise the debt ceiling, the poll finds, voters would blame congressional Republicans over the president, 48 percent to 34 percent.

Survey participants also would prefer to see two measures that Obama has pushed: tax hikes for the rich and closing loopholes.

Sixty-seven percent say an agreement to raise the debt ceiling should include not just spending cuts but tax increases for the rich and corporations, while 25 percent disagree. And 45 percent say that the president’s efforts to raise revenues look more like “closing loopholes” than “tax hikes.” Even so, 57 percent of those surveyed say they think the tax changes would hurt the middle class and not just the rich.

Seventy-one percent say they think the economy is in recession and though Obama has been in office for nearly two-and-a-half years, most still blamehis predecessor, George W. Bush, for the recession. Fifty-four percent say Bush is to blame more than Obama; 27 percent say the opposite.

Meanwhile, a Gallup Poll released Thursday morning finds Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the country at a near-low of Obama’s presidency — with just 16 percent of those surveyed saying they are satisfied. That number was slightly lower in February 2009, at 15 percent.

The biggest drop since the same question was asked in June is among Democrats, whose satisfaction fell from 35 percent to 25 percent. Independents’ satisfaction dropped three percentage points to 14 percent, while Republicans’ stayed flat at 9 percent.

Quinnipiac surveyed 2,311 registered voters July 5-11. The error margin is plus or minus two percentage points.

The Gallup findings are based on interviews conducted with 1,016 adults July 7-10 as part of the daily tracking poll. The error margin is plus or minus four percentage points.