Two polls today (WaPo and CBS/NYT) confirm it: Obama's approval ratings have tanked over the past several days.

There's something weird going on in both, however.

As you'd expect, both have a sharp drop in approval of Obama's handling of the economy.

In the new, CBS/NYT one, his support on this measure dropped from 44% to 39%. The WaPo one is similar: 44% to 38%.

And yet... in neither poll is there actually a deterioration in the way people view the economy itself.

In the latest one (.pdf), the % of people saying the economy was "fairly good" fell from 22% to 21%. Hardly a major drop. And in fact the % of people saying the economy was performing fairly bad dropped from 46% to 45%, so it's not clear that there's been any deterioration at all. And on the one from this morning, people's outlook on the economy actually rose from the previous polling.

So on both polls you see Obama taking hits on his performance in managing the economy, but not a major drop in how people view the economy itself.

And in fact other polls, such as Gallup's US Economic Confidence tracking poll show confidence surging in just the last several days.

Another weird thing is that the connection between Obama's approval and the stock market seems to have gotten divorced. Early last month we made this chart, showing how close his approval ratings hewed to the S&P 500.

We haven't updated the chart, but the stock market has only risen since then, and though it's stalled out a bit lately, we're still at post-crisis highs.

So it's a little hard to gauge the sentiment of folks right now, but you can't discount what two polls, which have such consistent results are saying.