POLL: Obama Approval Rating Hits 79%

Thanks to Talking Points Memo I was alerted to this new CNN poll showing the extent of Barack Obama's honeymoon with the American public. Obama's job approval rating is 79% (while his personal approval rating is 76%) with 56% of Americans approving of Vice-President-elect Joe Biden.

Additionally, Michelle Obama has an approval rating of 67% and the Democratic Party is approved by 60%.

The poll was conducted December 1-2 by telephone and has a margin of error of +/- 3 points.

Here are some other details of the poll:

Obama's approval rating is "14 points higher than the approval rating for president-elect Bush in 2001 and 17 points higher than president-elect Clinton's rating in 1992," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland noted.

The president-elect's current approval rating is also more than 50 points higher than Bush's current approval rating, which now stands at 28 percent, with 71 percent disapproving 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. To many Americans, the Bush Administration was a national disaster," says CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider.

Indeed.