Poll: Obama’s approval rating slides amid controversies

{mosads}According to the survey, 45 percent of voters said they approve of the job Obama is doing, against 51 who said they disapprove. In the same poll last month, the president stood above water at 47 positive and 45 negative. This is the first time since April, 2012, that Obama’s disapproval rating has topped the 50 percent mark in the Fox News poll.

Congress has kept the administration’s response to last year’s terror attack on the U.S. facility in Libya at the forefront through a series of hearings and investigations, and the White House has been on its heels in explaining recent flare-ups surrounding the IRS targeting of conservative groups and the Justice Department’s seizure of reporter emails and phone records over national security leaks.

Still, other recent polling shows the president maintaining his standing in the eyes of voters. According to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, Obama stands at 49 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval, while a CNN-ORC poll released late last week showed him at 53 to 45.

The Fox News poll found the public’s trust of the president is at an all-time low. According to the survey, only 49 percent said Obama is honest and trustworthy, the first time he has registered below the 50-percent mark on the issue, while 48 said he is dishonest, an all-time high for the poll.  

Of the controversies the White House is presently embroiled in, a plurality, 32 percent, said the IRS targeting of conservative groups was most egregious, followed by Benghazi at 27, and the DOJ’s phone records seizures at 21.

Still, by a nearly two-to-one margin, voters said Obama would’ve won the November election over Republican Mitt Romney even if these issues had come to light before Election Day.

The Fox News poll of 1,013 registered voters was conducted between May 18 and May 20 and has a 3 percentage-point margin of error.