Seventy-six percent (76%) of U.S. voters now think President Obama is at least somewhat liberal. Forty-eight percent (48%) say he is very liberal, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

This marks the highest finding to date on the question and is a five-point increase in the number who say the president is very liberal from a month ago. Just before Obama took office in January, 65% said he was at least somewhat liberal, with 35% who described him as very liberal.

Seventeen percent (17%) of voters say the president is moderate, while only six percent (6%) believe he is conservative.

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Republicans are three times as likely as Democrats to say Obama is very liberal – 77% to 26%. The plurality (45%) of voters not affiliated with either party agree.

Among Democrats, 42% say the president is somewhat liberal and 26% say he is a moderate.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of liberals rate the president as at least somewhat liberal, but only 14% say he’s very liberal.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters say Judge Sonia Sotomayor,Obama’s first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, is a liberal.

For the second month in a row, 53% of voters say the president is governing like a partisan Democrat, while 32% say he is being bipartisan. In late January, only 39% of voters said he was governing in a partisan fashion while 42% said he was being bipartisan.

Obama’s overall approval rating in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll dropped below 50% for the first time last week.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters also say the man who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, Vice President Joe Biden, is at least somewhat liberal. Thirty-five percent (35%) view him as very liberal, while 20% say he is moderate. Seven percent (7%) think the former Delaware senator is conservative.

The findings on Biden have been largely unchanged so far this year.

Thirty-one percent (31%) say Biden will be on the Democratic national ticket with Obama in the next presidential election, but the identical number (31%) say he will not be. A sizable number (38%) are not sure.

In a survey in November 2007, 41% of Americans described themselves as fiscally conservative. Forty-three percent (43%) said they were fiscally moderate and 12% said liberal. Thirty-seven percent (37%) said they were conservative when it comes to “social issues like abortion, public prayer, and church-state topics.” On those social issues, 30% said they were moderate and 30% said liberal.

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