NEW YORK: U.S. President Barack Obama’s political standing is growing along with voters’ optimism that the economy is on the upswing, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows.The poll says consecutive months of job growth, the bullish stock market and improving consumer demand appear to be benefiting the president who stated outright three years ago that his chances for a second term would depend on his ability to persuade the country that its economy was on the mend by this very month.According to the poll, that the percentage of people who said they believed the economic outlook was improving is now greater, by double digits, than the percentage of those who said they believed it was getting worse, a reversal from a low point in September, when pessimists outnumbered optimists by more than three to one.


Showing steady improvement since early December, Obama’s approval rating has reached the 50 percent mark in The Times/CBS News poll - an important baseline in presidential politics and his highest approval rating since May 2010 (excepting the brief bump he received after Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011).
For the first time since the election season began in earnest in the late summer, as many Democratic voters as Republicans said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in the 2012 presidential election.
That would appear to wipe out the “enthusiasm gap” that promised to help Republicans greatly next fall.
Eight nominating contests, about 20 closely watched debates and several months of heavy state-by-state campaigning have seemingly failed to settle a restive Republican electorate that is highly motivated in its goal of limiting Obama to a single term but shows lingering signs of nervous indecision about whom it wants to assign the task of taking him on.
The poll shows that Romney would lose to Obama by six percentage points among all registered voters if the election were held today.
The last couple of months appear to have greatly harmed Romney’s standing with independent voters, who favored him over Obama in January by 46 percent to 39 percent, but now favor Obama over Mr. Romney by 49 percent to 38 percent.
Republican primary voters remain dissatisfied with their candidates: 62 percent say they want more choices while 34 percent say they are happy with the field. Sixty percent of GOP primary voters who have picked a candidate say they could still change their mind, while 39 percent say they have settled on a candidate.
The nationwide poll was based on telephone interviews conducted between February 8 and February 13 on land lines and cell phones with 1,197 adults, including 331 self-described Republican primary or caucus voters, and has margins of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. (APP)