GOP candidates' prolonged nominating battle improving Obama's approval ratings: Poll

Islamabad, Feb 28 (ANI): The prolonged nominating battle is taking a toll on the GOP candidates has helped improving President Barack Obama's approval rating by 53 percent, up 9 percentage points in four months, a new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll has revealed.

Matched up against his Republican opponents, Obama leads Mitt Romney by 10 points (53-43) and Rick Santorum by 11 (53-42). Even against a generic, unnamed Republican untarnished by attacks, Obama is up five percentage points. In November, he was tied, Politico quoted the poll findings, as saying.

"We've not been talking about which would do a better job of running against Obama. We've been talking about who is the most or who is the least conservative," Republican pollster Ed Goeas of The Tarrance Group, who helped conduct the bipartisan poll, said.

"That is a problem for Republicans," he added.

A third of Americans believe the country is on the right track - disconcertingly low for a president eight months before an election. Yet that figure is twice the number who believed it in November.

Only 33 percent of independents view Romney favorably, compared with 51 percent who see him in an unfavorable light. In a head-to-head match-up against Obama among independents, Romney now trails 49 percent to 37 percent. mong Republican voters nationally, Santorum narrowly edges out Romney, 36 percent to 34 percent. Newt Gingrich is a distant third with 13 percent, and Ron Paul gets only 7 percent.

Among independents, Santorum fares better than Romney: He is viewed favorably by 40 percent and unfavorably by 32 percent. But he remains largely undefined: 28 percent of independents either have no opinion of the ex-senator or have never heard of him. Even among Republicans, that number is 17 percent.

Forty percent of Republicans say Romney has run the most negative campaign, 10 times more than name Santorum. Gingrich is second to Romney on the question of who has run the nastiest operation. (ANI)