Gallup has it 46/43 today and Rasmussen has it 46/40, and we’ve got the same lopsided sample here that we had in that 15-point Newsweek spread last week — 39/22/27 among Democrats, Republicans, and independents, respectively. Even so, the LAT’s sample was random, and even Gallup concedes that Dems now lead the GOP 50/36 in party identification. We keep dismissing these polls where the leftist contingent vastly outnumbers the right, but, er, should we? Electoral reality is what it is these days, after all.

Here are the crosstabs. The good news for Maverick: A la last week’s Fox News poll, he still does well with independents on various issues — but not, notably, on the economy, where he trails Obama among indies by nine points and by 21 points overall. And then there’s this. Top is Obama’s enthusiasm metric, bottom is McCain’s:

That’s in line with what we’ve seen elsewhere. And if you don’t think it matters, compare the data in questions 3 and 4, in a two-man race versus a race with Bob Barr and Ralph Nader. Obama loses three points among independents in a four-man contest while McCain loses eight.