Obama's approval rating crosses 50%

US President Barack Obama now enjoys over 50 per cent of approval ratings as more Americans now see him as a political moderate and support his shift in a new direction, a latest opinion poll said today.

Just two months after his Democratic Party was shellacked by the Republicans in the November mid-term polls, Obama's approval rating has surged above 50 per cent as confidence in the economy has spiked, the poll by NBC News/Wall Street Journal said.

The Democratic Party not the Republicans now enjoy a net-positive rating from the public, even as US citizens still are concerned over high unemployment rate, now 9.4 per cent, the survey said.

The overall poll indicates that even as the President faces criticism from his party members in Washington, he is shifting in a direction supported by many Democrats outside Washington and by the public in general.

However, the results of the opinion poll comes on a day on which Republican-majority House of Representatives repealed the health care act, one of the signature success of the Obama Administration.

"The last six weeks have been the best six weeks the President has had in his first two years in office," Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, was quoted as saying by the NBC news.

Another opinion poll conducted by CNN last week had said that Obama's approval rating has crossed the 50 per cent mark.

According to RealClearPolitics, the website which keeps tracks of all such opinion polls, on an average 49.9 per cent of the people approves Obama while 44.9 per cent disapprove him.