Poll: Obama approval rating 79 percent

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Americans approve of Barack Obama in greater numbers than they did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton during similar periods, a CNN poll indicates.

Nearly eight in 10 Americans polled in the CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday indicated they thought the president-elect was doing well during the transition, CNN said. The 79 percent approval rating is 14 points higher than the approval rating for Bush before he took office in 2001 and 17 points higher than Clinton's rating in 1992 during his transition.

Only 18 percent of those polled indicated they disapprove of Obama's performance, pollsters said.

Obama's approval rating more than 50 points higher than Bush's current approval rating of 28 percent, CNN said. Seventy-one percent of respondents said they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

"An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent -- that's the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster," said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst.

The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. nationwide telephone poll was conducted Dec.1-2, with 1,096 adults. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.