CNN Poll: Obama approval below 50 percent

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's job approval rating fell below 50 percent for the first time in a CNN poll, the cable news network said Friday.

Forty-eight percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing as president, a 7 percentage point drop from last month, results of the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey indicated.

Fifty percent of Americans disapproved, the results showed.

"The poll indicates that the biggest drop in approval comes from non-college educated white voters," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That's one indication among many that Obama's growing unpopularity may be more related to unemployment and the poor economy."

Six in 10 respondents said they favor Obama's plan to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, while two-thirds said they support his plan to start a troop drawdown in the summer of 2011, ground conditions permitting.

Most respondents said they thought announcing the withdrawal start date was not a good idea, results said.

Several late-November polls indicated Obama's approval rating was this low even before he announced the temporary troop surge Tuesday, CNN said. Weekly averages of national polls showed Obama's approval consistently at 52 percent or 53 percent from mid-October through mid-November.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. nationwide telephone poll interviewed 1,041 people Wednesday and Thursday. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.