The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. The president gets big bounces on dealing with Afghanistan, with his approval rating soaring to 60 percent, and on handling the threat of terrorism, where he recorded a career high of 69 percent. Republicans are more apt to give former president George W. Bush acclaim for killing bin Laden, with 81 percent saying he deserves at least some of the credit for what happened Sunday.
– Barack Obama’s approval rating took a pretty significant jump overnight after the killing of Osama bin Laden, with 56% now saying they approve of the job he’s doing overall, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted last night. That’s a 9-point increase from Obama’s April rating. He also notched a career high 69% approval rating for his handling of terrorism, and a 60% approval rating for his work in Afghanistan. Obama’s boost is nearly identical to the one Bush got after Saddam Hussein’s capture in 2003. In both cases, independents moved the most, improving their view of each president by 10 percentage points. But it wasn’t all good news for the White House: The public is as skeptical as ever of Obama’s handling of the economy, with an unchanged 40% approving. That could make sustaining the Osama boost a challenge. (Meanwhile, a Daily Beast/Newsweek poll finds little change in his overall approval rating before and after the raid.)