Poll: Public Trusts Obama Over GOP On Economy

Politico reports:

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 while 46 percent disapprove.

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

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