US President Barack Obama's approval ratings have improved and touched 50% amid people's growing optimism over the state of economy, according to a latest opinion poll.
Showing steady improvement since early December, Obama's approval ratings have reached the 50% mark thus gave him a much brighter chance of winning the presidential polls in November, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll.
This is his highest approval rating since May 2010 (excepting the brief bump he received after Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011), the New York Times said.
"For the first time since the election season began in earnest in the late summer, as many Democratic voters as Republicans said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in the 2012 presidential election," it said.
According to the NYT/CBS poll, though Obama led one-o-one against the four Republican presidential candidates, the president received poor marks on his handling of the federal budget deficit, with 59% of poll respondents expressing disapproval.
Meanwhile, a new CNN poll caught Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum - the two leading Republican presidential candidate - in a dead heat nationally. While Santorum got 34% of the poll support, Romney received 32%.
The poll also said that Santorum supporters are much more highly motivated than those backing Romney.
"The new numbers indicate a split in the Republican party that goes deeper than ideology, with signs of a gender gap and class warfare breaking out in the GOP ranks," CNN polling director Keating Holland said.
