President Barack Obama's approval ratings are just below 50 percent, but head-to-head polling shows a competitive race, according to the most recent polling.
Here's a by-the-numbers look at the latest polling and approval ratings for President Obama.
48: President Obama's approval ratings has gone down gradually since early February. Trends provided by Rasmussen Reports show he had a high of 51 percent total approval on February 10 and 14, but he's dipped to 48 percent on Wednesday. Two days before he was rated as low as 45 percent.
25: The president's strong approvals are at 25 percent and his strong disapproval is at 40 percent.
-15: Rasmussen uses an Approval Index rating to help determine trending, and Obama's index rating is currently at -15. He has done as well as -10 for February 6 and 7, but has dropped gradually over the past few weeks, dipping as low as -16 on Tuesday.
45: Gallup shows the president's weekly job approval, from between February 20 through 26, was at 45 percent to 47 percent. This is the same approval rating he had for February 13 through 19.
45: The daily approval rating from the same firm shows the president at 50 percent disapproval and 45 percent approval. Since the start of February, his trends for Gallup had shown only a point or two of difference, but that trend broke on Tuesday, when the number spread became 43 approve, 50 disapprove.
45: The number 45 is repeated as Rasmussen Reports says that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney would get 45 percent of the vote in a possible match-up against President Obama. Obama would see 44 percent of that vote.
43: Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum would lose to President Obama with 43 percent of the vote to Obama's 46 percent. However, for both polls the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
500: The Rasmussen poll was conducted by telephone surveys with 500 likely voters over three days.
Shawn Humphrey is a former contributor to The Flint Journal and lives near Washington D.C. in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
