While Mitt Romney’s polling numbers have started to improve in Michigan, Rick Santorum’s national lead continues to grow. Santorum now holds a 10 point national lead over Romney according to Gallup Daily Tracking poll. Santorum is at 36 percent and Romney is at 26 percent. In addition Newt Gingrich has continued his slide down to just 13 percent support, slightly above Ron Paul.

President Obama’s job approval rating has started to break the very important 50 percent mark according to three new national polls. The CBS News/New York Times poll found him at 50 percent approval to 43 percent disapproval, CNN/ORC International has him at 50 percent approval to 48 percent disapproval, and the Democracy Corps poll puts him at 50 percent approval to 46 percent disapproval.

Since Rick Santorum’s triple win last week the state of the Republican primary has changed dramatically. In the past 24 hours four major national polls have found Rick Santorum slightly leading or effectively tied with Mitt Romney. In addition the polls found Newt Gingrich’s support has falling significantly since his January peak.

The ranks of the uninsured continued to grow last year according to Gallup. Their poll found that 17.1 percent of adults did not have health insurance in 2011, which is a significant increase from the 16.4 percent in 2010. It’s part of a long run trend driven by higher costs leading to a decline in employer-provided insurance, and worsened by unemployment. One error in the ACA was that its expanded insurance coverage does not kick in until 2014.

Rick Santorum’s surprise triple win last week in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri has proven to be an amazing shot in the arm to his campaign. His polling numbers have skyrocketed both nationally and in the upcoming primary states. Santorum is surging in Michigan, where he now holds a 15 point lead over Mitt Romney.

Over at The New Republic, Noam Scheiber has a pretty decent account of how the Obama administration made its pivot to deficit reduction after the 2010 election and messed up the debt ceiling issue.

Since Tuesday, Santorum’s polling numbers jumped up 6 points. On Tuesday he was at 16 percent and now he’s at 22 percent. Over the same time period, Mitt Romney’s and Gingrich’s numbers have dropped. Romney went from 37 percent to 34 percent, Gingrich has gone from 22 percent to just 18 percent, pushing him down to third place.

Recently we have seen a string of positive economic indicators that all point to the same general pattern. While the individual pieces are subjectively good compared to pre-crisis level, the data gives the clear impression that the economy is modestly trending in a positive direction.

Just when it seems like it couldn’t possibly getting any lower, Congress’ job approval rating drops to another historic low. According to Gallup only 10 percent of the country now approves of the job Congress is doing.

Economic confidence among Americans has been trending significantly upwards for five straight months according to Gallup. While Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index of -27 is still objectively bad, it is a dramatic improvement from last summer. And there’s clearly a solid positive trend, which is good news for the incumbent President.