Despite a thumbs down from much new and old media punditry, a new Gallup poll suggests that President Barack Obama’s surprising Nobel Peace Prize win may have boosted his approval rating:

Barack Obama appears to have gotten a slight bounce in support after he was announced as the Nobel Peace Prize winner on Friday. His 56% job approval rating for the last two Gallup Daily tracking updates is up from a term-low 50% as recently as last week, and 53% in the three days before the Nobel winner was announced.

The positive momentum in Obama’s approval rating is a departure from recent months, as his support has generally declined or been stagnant during this time. He has been below 60% since mid-July, and had been below 55% since early September. The current 56% approval rating is his best since a 58% reading in Aug. 5-7 polling.

Pollster.com’s average of polls also finds Obama’s numbers going up:

And RealClearPolitics’ average of polls finds the same thing:

This suggests that the 7/24 new/old media discussion and analysis of issues that some (including some White House officials) dismissively call “chatter” may not accurately reflect the perceptions “out there.” Given the tone of discussions recently about the Nobel Prize, it would have been expected that Obama’s numbers would have possibly gone down. Another possibility: the focus over the past week has been on foreign policy issues, the economy and the Nobel Prize — not health care, which has become to Obama’s popularity what Dracula is to a blood supply.