Obama approval rating falls below 50 percent

President Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in polling by Quinnipiac University as U.S. voter discontent grows over the war in Afghanistan.

Obama's job approval rating fell to 48 percent in the Nov. 9-16 survey of registered voters nationwide by the Hamden, Conn.-based university, with 42 percent polled saying they disapproved of the job he is doing.

"In politics, symbols matter, and this is not a good symbol for the White House," Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

Obama's approval rating was 59 percent in a Quinnipiac survey conducted Feb. 25 to March 2.

The percentage of people who approve of Obama's handling of the economy fell to 43 percent, down from 47 percent in an October Quinnipiac poll.

The percentage who say they disapprove of the way Obama is handling the war in Afghanistan rose to 49 percent in the latest survey, up from 42 percent last month. Thirty-eight percent approved of his handling of the war, compared with 40 percent last month.

The November survey of 2,518 registered voters also found that the percentage of those saying that fighting the war in Afghanistan was the right thing to do has fallen below 50 percent, to 48 percent. That is down from 52 percent in October.

Overall, the new numbers on Afghanistan show an almost across-the-board erosion of support for the war, Brown said.

Obama is weighing a request by his commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to increase the U.S. force of 68,000 by as many as 40,000 personnel next year.

A plurality of voters surveyed, 47 percent, backed sending more troops to Afghanistan, compared with 42 percent who opposed the plan.

The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

-- Bloomberg News