Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

President Barack Obama waits for a heavy rain to pass before crossing West Executive Avenue from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to the West Wing of the White House, March 12, 2013.

President Barack Obama’s approval rating has dropped below 50 percent in a new survey, as the public sours on Washington’s handling of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that went into effect at the beginning of the month.

The president’s approval rating has declined to 48 percent, down from a pre-inauguration high of 54 percent, according to a poll released today by Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner Research. Forty-nine percent of respondents voiced disapproval of the president, according to the survey of 950 voters taken March 9-12.

Congressional Republicans earn even lower marks.

They have a 27 percent approval rate and a 66 percent disapproval rate in this survey.

Still, that shows an improvement from their 23 percent approval rate and 73 percent disapproval number in the last Greenberg survey, released Jan. 14.

“Be careful of making too much of any individual polls or even a series of polls,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said today. “When Washington is dysfunctional everyone in Washington looks bad.”

The president’s decline, evident in a pair of other public polls, comes as the economy is showing some signs of strength.

Sales by U.S. retailers climbed twice as much as forecast in February, showing improving job prospects are helping consumers nd the economy overcome higher taxes and gasoline prices, according to figures released by the Commerce Department today.

The unemployment rate last month dropped to 7.7 percent, the lowest since December 2008, according to the Labor Department.

Obama’s approval rating stood at 50 percent in an ABC News-Washington Poll released today, down five points from a 55 percent approval in January, before his inauguration. The president’s 18-point advantage on Republicans over handling the economy has shrunk to 4 points, according to the poll.

With approval of Congress at 16 percent in the survey, Carney questioned the new value of focusing on the president’s numbers.

“The news of that poll was that the president was at 50 percent, not that the Republican Party had a disapproval rate in he mid-70s,” he said.

A McClatchy-Marist poll released yesterday gave the president a 45 percent approval rating among registered voters and a 48 percent disapproval score, marking the first time his disapproval has been higher than his approval rating since November 2011.

The McClatchy survey also noted that 46 percent of those survey blamed Republicans and 37 percent for letting the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts known as sequestration take effect.

Original post is Obama Slips Below 50% — White House: ‘Everyone Looks Bad’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Outdoor space heaters wait to be removed by volunteers, employees and contractors from the Service Employees International Union as they work to break down ‘The People’s Camp’ on the National Mall west of the U.S. Capitol.

That’s the approval rating of Congress, according to a Gallup survey conducted March 7-10.

The figure is little changed from a month ago, when Congress had a 15 percent approval rating. The most recent surveys were conducted after automatic budget cuts went into effect March 1.

Congress, divided between a Republican-led House and a Democratic-controlled Senate, continues to have a poor public image even as the labor market improves and household net worth rises.

“Americans are saving less and spending more for purchases such as new automobiles, as household net worth climbs with rising home values and stock indexes surging to record highs. Companies are ramping up hiring, adding 246,000 to private payrolls in February,”  Bloomberg’s Shobhana Chandra and Rich Miller reported yesterday.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 13% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks about gun violence as well as the economy in Chicago on Feb. 15, 2013.

That was President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Feb. 15-18.

It is the president’s strongest level of support since September 2009, Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning reports.

Forty percent disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president, the poll found. On seven specific issues, Obama’s approval rating ranged from 35 percent on the federal budget deficit to 59 percent on terrorism. On the economy, public opinion is divided, with 47 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving of the president’s performance.

Obama and the Democratic Party he leads have a stronger public image than that of the Republican Party, which lost the presidential election in 2012 and also lost ground in the House and Senate.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they have very favorable or mostly favorable feelings toward Obama, compared with 47 percent for the Democratic Party and 35 percent for the Republican Party.

By a margin of 43 percent to 34 percent, Americans blame Republicans in Congress more than Obama and Democrats in Congress for “what’s gone wrong in Washington,” Bloomberg’s Richard Rubin reports. Obama and Republicans haven’t reached an agreement to avert automatic spending cuts set to take effect March 1.

In other poll findings, about half of Americans think the housing market will improve over the next year, compared with 16 percent who think it will worsen, Bloomberg’s David J. Lynch reports.

The Bloomberg National Poll was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, and is based on interviews with 1,003 Americans ages 18 or older.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 55% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner leaves a House Republican Caucus meeting on Jan. 1, 2013 in Washington.

That’s the percentage of Americans who approve of the House speaker’s handling of the fiscal negotiations, according to Gallup.

As the 113th Congress is sworn in today, with Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio standing for re-election as leader of the House, the public’s view of Boehner’s handling of the recently concluded “fiscal cliff” negotiations has not been favorable.

In a mid-December survey by the Gallup organization, just 25 percent of those surveyed said they approved of the job Boehner was doing with the fiscal cliff talks.

Nearly half of those surveyed (48 percent) Dec. 14-16 gave President Barack Obama a favorable rating for his handling of the fiscal talks.

Those talks ended on New Year’s Day, with congressional passage of a plan that included the income tax increases for the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers that Obama had sought and none of the additional spending cuts that Boehner had sought.

The two will face one another again as Congress nears a debate on raising the federal debt ceiling this winter.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 25% by Political Capital.