Obama approval rating jumps: poll

On the two-year anniversary of Obama\'s historic inauguration, a growing number of Americans see the US economy improving in coming years, but also voiced mounting concern about the stubbornly high unemployment rate, now at 9.4 percent, according to Thursday\'s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Obama\'s approval rating surged to 53 percent, a whopping eight points higher than in December, when an end-of-session US Congress saw Obama shift to the center to earn key bipartisan legislative achievements including passage of a landmark arms reduction treaty with Russia.

The across-the-board rating improvements also saw the Democratic Party enjoy a net-positive rating, and will see the president ride into his State of the Union speech later this month in a better position than many analysts had predicted as his Republican foes took control of the House of Representatives in early January.

"The last six weeks have been the best six weeks the president has had in his first two years in office," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with a Republican pollster.

A series of accomplishments have boosted Obama\'s numbers. In mid-December he signed legislation extending Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels, and extending jobless benefits, and on December 22 he signed a law repealing a ban on gays serving openly in the military, as well as the arms-reduction treaty with Russia.

In early January, Labor Department data showed the unemployment rate declined from 9.8 percent in November to 9.4 percent last month, and the president on January 12 delivered a well-received speech at a memorial for victims of the deadly Arizona shooting.

The poll said 74 percent of Americans approve of how he handled the tragedy.

While a majority of respondents said they still feared the economy was on the wrong track, 35 percent said it was headed in the right direction, a jump from 28 percent in December, according to the survey.

Optimism about the economy -- in five-year and one-year outlooks -- stood at 18-month highs, it said. Fifty-six percent saw a better economic outlook in the next five years, while 21 percent said it will be worse.

The poll of 1,000 adults was taken January 13-17, and has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.

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