Obama’s approval ratings drop (VIDEO)

President Barack Obama’s poll numbers dropped drastically in the latest poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News from March 7 to 11.

The numbers, released yesterday, showed only 41 percent of respondents approved of his job performance, with 47 percent disapproving. They are a dramatic turnaround from just one month ago when Obama’s job performance won 50 percent approval, on signs that the economy was finally recovering.

The Times and CBS News attributed the drop in approval to higher gas prices, with The Times noting that 54 percent of the respondents believed that gas prices were within a president’s ability to control. According to CBS, the price of a gallon of gasoline jumped by 12 cents in the last two weeks.

Poll numbers released by The Washington Post/ABC News on Monday also showed similar drops, with Obama’s approval rating at 46 percent, a drop from last month’s 50 percent.

In The Post/ABC News poll, 65 percent of those surveyed specifically disapproved of Obama’s handling of gas prices, though only half of those surveyed said the administration could do anything to bring down the cost of gas.

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The experts, however, say there is little the president can do to control gas prices. “This notion that a politician can wave a magic wand and impact the 90-million-barrel-a-day global oil market is preposterous,” Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser to the Bipartisan Policy Center, told The Post.

According to The Post, oil prices are a product of exploration, car design and consumer habits, combined with political events in oil-rich countries such as Sudan, Libya and Iran and anxieties about energy worldwide.

All of the polls conceded that they only capture a particular moment in time and vary depending on what questions are asked in what context.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney addressed the issue while speaking to voters in Missouri, blaming high gas prices on Obama's reluctance to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the delay on the Keystone XL pipeline, according to The Times.

He criticized Obama bringing up tensions with Iran as an issue that could impact gas prices, saying, "it’s disappointing to have the president of the United States take a serious foreign policy issue — which is Iran, the state sponsor of terror in the world, becoming nuclear — and trying to turn that into, saying we’re somehow responsible for high gasoline prices in this country."

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Watch how White House spokesman Jay Carney addressed the issue of high gas prices in a press conference, courtesy of Politico: