WASHINGTON – The stronger the economy gets, the more the presidential race comes down to what voters believe: Are things actually getting better? Or is it all still a mess?

If the economy’s direction is the key, President Obama’s hand just keeps getting stronger.

A new snapshot Friday showed the unemployment rate has tumbled to 8.3 percent. That means it is almost back to where it was right after Obama took office, a time when a monstrous recession was still gobbling up American jobs. Hiring is now on a consistent upswing. Employers added nearly twice as many jobs last year as they did in 2010.

On Wall Street, where investors had already driven stocks to their best start in 15 years because of optimism about the economy, the jobs report triggered a spasm of buying.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 156.82 points, its second-best showing this year, and finished the day at 12,862.23, its highest close since May 2008, four months before the financial crisis struck. The Nasdaq composite index finished at its highest level since December 2000, during a steep decline after the dot-com stock craze. Money poured out of bonds, seen as less risky than stocks, and bond yields rose.

The Republicans challenging Obama – and the president, himself – try to spin every fresh batch of economic data to their advantage, depicting either a nation mired in trouble or one showing undeniable signs of progress. So whichever side wins the public on this one point will have an enormous edge toward winning it all.

Shortly after the jobs report was released, Obama declared, sounding more confident than ever, “The recovery is speeding up.” The Republicans say that’s none of his doing – that improvements are in spite of his policies, not because of them.

There’s still a long way to go before full recovery. Federal deficits and Europe’s troubles hang ominously over the U.S. And unemployment could worsen again.

But there’s little doubt that the brightening picture, which is also reflected in other economic indicators, has seriously complicated the messaging for the GOP.

It wasn’t long ago that the unemployment rate was closer to 10 percent and stagnant, making it easier for them to claim nothing was getting better under Obama. Now they have to calibrate.

“I believe the economy will come back. It always does,” said Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, during a campaign stop in Nevada. He blamed Obama’s policies for slowing the recovery, hurting families and making it harder for businesses to bounce back.

“And for that,” Romney said, “the president deserves the blame that he’ll receive in this campaign.”

The bigger opening for Republicans is the fact that millions of people don’t feel any better yet, no matter what the statistics show.

About 12.8 million people remain out of work, and an additional 11 million have either given up looking or can find only part-time jobs. Nearly 43 percent of those out of work have been unemployed for at least six months.

An official with the Congressional Budget Office testified this week that although the agency expects growth to pick up after 2013, it also expects the economy’s output to remain below its potential until 2018 and that the unemployment rate will stay above 7 percent until 2015.

The report he referenced predicted that unemployment could climb back to 8.8 percent later this year, shortly before November’s election. That could hurt Obama.

Even so, Republicans are trying to shift the question away from whether the economy is getting better to whether their party would do better yet.

That argument can be heard from the campaign trail to Capitol Hill, where House Speaker John Boehner accurately pointed out that unemployment has topped 8 percent for 36 months in a row under Obama.

Obama’s campaign, while noting recent improvements, is eager to frame the election around the question of which candidate has a better and more hopeful economic vision for the next four years and beyond.

Obama’s vulnerability, as the president who owns the economy, is that voters who remain in dire economic straits will be so turned off by their current condition that they won’t listen to talk about the future.