US President Barack Obama's advantage over his potential Republican presidential contenders has narrowed down, even though he maintains a lead over them.
According to a poll released by The New York Times/CBS News, Obama had a 47% to 44 percentage advantage over Mitt Romney, the leading Republican presidential candidate.
This is a statistical dead heat, given the poll's margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points.
Obama had a slight more advantage over Rick Santorum, who is coming second after Romney in the Republican presidential primary race.
Against him, Obama drew 48% compared with 44%.
In both cases, the difference between the candidates was slightly smaller than it was last month, the poll reported.
"The narrowing gap seems at least partly attributable to a drop in support for Obama. The new survey showed that Obama's approval rating has fallen to 41% - his lowest approval rating in CBS News polling and a 9-point drop from last month," the news channel said.
The narrowing of the gap was also reported by The Washington Post/ ABC News opinion poll.
"Obama is now on par with Romney (47% for the president, 49% for Romney) and Santorum (49 to 46%). Previously, Obama held significant advantages over both," the opinion poll said.
The Republican race, American media, said has essentially narrowed down between Romney and Santorum.
And in both the cases, Obama's popularity gap has narrowed over the past few weeks, news reports said.
