Poll: 56 Percent Approve of President Obama

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that Americans still approve of the job that President Obama is doing:

President Obama is showing durability against significant economic and policy challenges, maintaining majority approval for his job performance in the face of broad unemployment, a controversial health plan and continued doubts about his work on the war in Afghanistan.

...Obama, for his part, has a 56 percent job approval rating overall, better than on any individual issue tested in this ABC News/Washington Post poll save one – 60 percent for his handling of international affairs.

...Tellingly, Americans by 2-1, 61 percent to 31 percent, say leaders of the Republican Party are mainly criticizing Obama without presenting other ideas, rather than offering alternatives to his proposals. Independents, the center of politics, hold this view by 54-37 percent. And the ranks of independents are broad: They again account for a plurality of Americans, 39 percent in this survey, while Republicans, in the tank all year, make up just 21 percent of the population.