Daily News Photo IllustrationYoung voters are losing faith in President Obama, according to a new poll.

Barack Obama is no longer the big man on campus.

College students' support for the President is waning -- a worrying sign for Democrats who are trying to reenergize young voters before the midterm elections, which are just three weeks away.

Just 44% approve of the job Obama is doing, while 27% said they unhappy with his job performance, according to a new Associated Press-mtvU poll.

That's a significant dip from the 60% who gave the president high marks in a May 2009 poll. Only 15% of college goers had a negative opinion of him back then.

And if 2008 is any indication, the Democrats need young voters. During that presidential race, nearly one in eight voters cast their ballots for the first time. Exit polls showed 55% of new voters were age 18-24, and those young first-timers strongly supported the Democrats.

In 2008, Obama benefited from a flurry of endorsements from celebrities that young adults look up to such as Jay-Z, Chris Rock and Jennifer Aniston.

The President is making an effort to renew that campus enthusiasm. Obama will appear at a town hall that will be aired live on several youth-friendly networks including MTV and BET.

He'll also lead a rally Sunday at Ohio State University -- where the campus' 55,000 students are an important voting bloc in the battleground state.

Political scientists, campaign workers, and students said many young people are disenchanted with Obama's handling of the economy, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and failures to end the ban against gays serving openly in the military. There's also frustration of his inability to have delivered campaign promises to change Washington.

"People expect things to happen quickly," said Elizabeth Wright, a senior at the University of Colorado. "I don't think people understand it takes time."

The survey asked 2,207 randomly chosen undergraduates at 40 randomly selected four-year schools with at least 1,000 students. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3%.

Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan group that encourages young voters, said it registered 225,000 voters for this year's election. While that's more than four times as many as last midterm's election in 2006, she said the political parities aren't dishing out as much cash to garner the youth vote.

"It's a cycle of neglect," she said.

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