Obama approval rating below 50 percent

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Support for President Obama has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in a CNN poll despite high marks for his recently announced Afghanistan policy.

Forty-eight percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national survey released Friday said they approve of the job Obama is doing as president -- a drop of 7 percentage points from a survey last month.

Fifty percent said they do not approve. The difference of 2 percentage points between approval and disapproval falls within the range of the poll's sampling error.

"The poll indicates that the biggest drop in approval comes from noncollege-educated white voters," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. "That's one indication among many that Obama's growing unpopularity may be more related to unemployment and the poor economy" than to factors such as his strategy for Afghanistan.

Six in 10 of those questioned said they favor Obama's move to send 30,000 more troops to that country. Two-thirds also support his plan to start removing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2011 -- although the poll indicates most Americans think that announcing such a date in advance was a bad idea, and they are skeptical about whether conditions then will allow the United States to meet that goal.

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