Obama up 5 points in Pew poll

President Obama’s job approval ratings have risen 5 percentage points in the last month, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

Obama remains underwater in the poll, with 48 percent of adults disapproving of his job performance, compared to 47 percent who approve of it.

{mosads}Still, that’s a jump from 42 percent in December and comes along with other polls also showing rising support for the president.

The Pew poll also found that, for the first time since 2009, more say his policies have made the economy better rather than worse, 38 percent to 28 percent.

The president also engenders more confidence in his handling of the economy than congressional leaders of either party. Forty-nine percent say they have confidence in Obama to do the right thing with regards to the economy, while 50 percent say they have little or no confidence.

Thirty-seven percent of adults polled said that they were confident GOP leaders would do the right thing on the economy, while 61 said they did not have confidence in the new Republican congressional majority to do the right thing for the economy.

Forty-nine percent of those polled said they disapproved of Republican leaders’ “plans and policies for the future,” while 40 percent said they approved.

Despite the uptick in his overall approval ratings, the poll found skepticism with some Obama policies.

Forty-nine percent said it would be a bad idea to close the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which Obama has vowed to do, compared to 42 percent who said it was a good idea.

The poll had a sample size of 1,504 adults and a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.9 percentage points. Respondents were polled from January 7-11.