Who Are These People?

CBS News' chief political consultant Marc Ambinder takes to his home blog over at the Atlantic to write about a new study of independent voters conducted by Alex Gage, a longtime GOP consultant. With this group of voters potentially a decisive bloc, the whole post is worth a read, but here's the bottom line:

Among the key findings: Democrats have a built-in structural advantage among independents to the score of between five and ten points. But McCain remains competitive because a lot of those independents are ideological conservatives who have weak partisan attachments to the Republican Party. Without being pushed, 45% of the sample, including 59% of the self-described moderates in the sample, said they would vote for Obama and 39% said they would vote for McCain. With leaners, McCain makes up two points of the margin.