Obama approval rating dips below 40 percent in new poll

President Barack Obama is nearing his all-time low approval rating, according to a new Gallup poll.

Just 39 percent of Americans approve of the job the president is doing, with 53 percent saying they disapprove.

Obama's all-time low approval rating, according to Gallup, was 38 percent in mid-2011.

Nearly a year ago — the week before Christmas — his approval rating stood close to 60 percent, according to The Hill.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week put Obama's approval rating at 42 percent — an all-time low in their decades of polling.

More from GlobalPost: Disapproval of Congress hits all-time high, according to new poll

The sharp drop isn't terribly surprising given the administration's series of stumbling blocks since this summer.

First came the allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, then the debate over whether to intervene in Syria, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over Obamacare and how it has been implemented.

The president has also drawn sharp rebuke from Republicans recently for not honoring the promise he made in the run-up to Obamacare's passage and his 2012 re-election campaign that Americans could keep their health plans. That, in fact, has not been the case.

More from GlobalPost: Obama's approval rating down amid NSA scandal