Poll: Obama's Georgia numbers better than in many swing states

A Gallup poll released Monday showed that President Obama's job approval ratings are higher in Georgia than in other traditional swing states including Florida, New Mexico and Ohio.

Gallup's results are based on aggregated daily tracking data from January through June, consisting of nearly 90,000 interviews nationally.

Obama averaged 47 percent approval nationwide during this period. In Georgia, he was slightly above that, at 48 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval. That ties his approval ratings in the quadrennial swing state of Pennsylvania and is higher than his numbers in nine states that he won in 2008: Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Mexico, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana and New Hampshire.

Georgia is the only state in the poll that Obama didn't win in 2008 where his approval numbers are higher than his disapproval numbers.

The state has changed rapidly in the last decade, growing 18 percent from 2000 to 2010, with four-fifths of that growth from minority voters. The Peach State’s black population jumped by a quarter; African-Americans are now 30 percent of the state’s population. The state's Latino population also doubled.

Obama took 47 percent of the state's vote in 2008; this could be one of his few opportunities to expand the playing field in his reelection.