Voters Shedding G-O-P Tag In Favor Of IND, Gallop Says

A recent Gallop poll indicated that America is pretty much divided equally among Democrats (33%), Republicans (32%) and independents (34%). Going behind the numbers, as they like to say on TV, Gallop analyts have found an interesting trend. The number of voters who identify themselves as Republicans has dropped by 4 percentage points since 2000, with virtually all of those voters now in the independent column. Click for a video report from Gallup.

The New York Times reported this morning that Republican Senate candidate John Spencer is using his role as potential Hillary slayer to kick off a 30-state solicitation of funding for his campaign. The campaign is being bolstered by a letter-writing campaign to GOP bigwigs, seeking the party's support (money). The Politcker blog got its hands on one of those letters.

Meanwhile, conservative icon William Buckley Jr. told Bloomberg News in a recent interview he thinks Sen. Clinton has a very legitimate shot at becoming the nation's first woman president.

Crossing the Hudson into Jersey, a Rutgers - Eagleton poll puts incumbent Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez five points ahead of GOP rival Thomas Kean Jr. That's the third time is less the past week a poll has shown that race changing hands. Obviously there's no frontrunner here yet. One interesting tidbit from this poll, according to poll analysts about 12% of respondents seem to be confusing Kean with his dad, the former governor of the Garden State.