The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index for Tuesday shows that 39% Strongly Approve of the way Barack Obama is performing his role as President-elect while 21% Strongly Disapprove for a net rating of +18. That’s up ten points since the night after the election (see trends).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. Rasmussen Reports believes that this is a better measure of public perceptions than the overall approval ratings.

Overall, 59% of voters somewhat or strongly approve of Obama’s performance so far while 38% disapprove. Among those who consider economic issues most important, 71% give Obama their approval. The President-elect gets positive reviews from 39% of those who say national security issues are most important. Most voters say that either Iran or a terrorist group will give Obama his first foreign policy test following the election.

The Presidential Approval Index is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time and a FREE daily e-mail update is available. By way of comparison, 13% of all voters Strongly Approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove. That gives the current President a -31 rating on the Presidential Approval Index.

Forty-two percent (42%) of voters expect Obama’s Supreme Court appointments to be too liberal while 43% say they will be about right ideologically.

Voters are looking for bipartisan co-operation in the Obama era. However, A plurality believe that Obama will govern as a partisan Democrat.

Just 30% of voters support a bailout of the nation’s automakers.

More voters are concerned that Obama will bring too much change to the nation rather than too little. Most Democrats worry there will be too little change while Republicans and unaffiliated voters hold the opposite view. On one hot-button issue from the campaign, 68% support offshore oil drilling but only 44% think the President-elect agrees.

A Fordham University professor has rated the national pollsters on their record in Election 2008. We also have provided a summary of our results for your review. Every state that Rasmussen Reports projected would head to one candidate or the other did vote for that candidate.

Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters--is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for the full-week results are available for Premium Members.

Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process.

A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning. We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.