Senator Barack Obama is more electable than Senator Hillary Clinton due to his strength among independent voters. And a contest between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain would be a plus for America’s independent voters since both appeal to independents — and it wouldn’t be as divisive as a Clinton-McCain race.

That’s the contention of John Avlon, the former adviser to President Bill Clinton and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who has written the definitive book on independent voters
in America. At the end of his column in the New York Post, Avlon writes:

A presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain would be a win-win for America’s rising tide of independent voters. They present clear policy differences, but they are decidedly non-polarizing political figures, offering a healthy competition for cross-over votes and a welcome break from the hyper-partisanship of the Bush-Clinton-Bush era. Nominating Hillary Clinton would deepen our domestic political divisions –that’s a data-driven conclusion that’s difficult for her supporters to spin their way out of.

And Avlon presents the data. He start his column, his first since leaving Giuliani’s campaign (he used to write for the New York Sun) this way:

It’s electability, stupid.

That’s what Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been spinning to super-delegates and anyone else who will listen since she lost her grip on once-inevitable nomination.

There’s just one problem – when it comes to independent voters, those crucial swing votes in swing states, Hillary doesn’t hold the electability edge: Barack Obama does.

Independent voters favor Obama by a 2 to 1 margin over Hillary – 49% to 24% – according to a NBC/WSJ poll taken after the Jeremiah Wright scandal in late March. His approval rating among Republicans is almost twice Hillary’s as well – 19% to 10%.

Crossover appeal is the key indicator of electability – especially for Democrats. Despite Democratic dominance of Congress during most of the 20th Century, no Democratic president managed to win more than 51% of the popular vote, with the exceptions of FDR and LBJ. What’s the lesson? Democrats especially depend on Independent voters and even some centrist Republicans to win the White House.

That’s true now more than ever: Independent voters are the fastest growing and largest segment of the American electorate, as detailed in former Clinton and Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen’s new book “Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.”

Obama’s Independent edge has already had an impact in key 2008 swing states like Virginia, where independents made up 22% of the February 12th open primary. Obama won their support by a 2 to 1 margin, on his way to a 64-35 blowout victory.

He then looks at Clinton’s win and says that the data does not show her strong in attracting independent voters. Meanwhile, he looks at the GOP’s chief asset in attracting independent voters…McCain:

Ironically, the last Democratic presidential candidate who showed an Obama-like ability to win over Independent voters was Bill Clinton. Even against Independent candidate Ross Perot and Republican Bob Dole in 1996, Clinton won 47% of the Independent vote.

But luckily for Republicans, no political leader in the country has made deeper inroads to the independent vote over a longer time than Senator John McCain. His profile was forged in opposition to the Bush 2000 campaign and its Karl Rove playbook, as much as it was in the Hanoi Hilton. Instead of just playing to the base, McCain criticized out-of-control spending in Tom DeLay’s Congress, held hearings into ethics charges against Jack Abramoff, and worked productively with Democrats in the Senate.

McCain’s maverick status angered many of the right-wing rank-and-file, but its paying off for the GOP now that he’s their nominee. A new AP/Yahoo poll found that “The Arizona senator has made a race of the White House contest by attracting disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall.”

Avlon also notes something that we have picked up emails (even from our younger TMV cobloggers who are at universities, in travels across the country and even in this independent voter’s own reaction to the race:

McCain and Obama have overlapping appeal. An independent voter may like McCain (even though he or she doesn’t agree with him on all issues) and also like Obama (even though he and she doesn’t agree with him on all issues).

Evidence of Obama and McCain’s overlapping independent appeal is seen in the NBC/WSJ poll response to the question “who can unite the country?” – a clear failing of the Bush administration. Obama and McCain were neck and neck with 60% and 58% respectively, while only 46% of voters believed that Hillary Clinton has that capacity.

And — also something we have noted repeatedly in our posts here — Clinton generates another reaction among many independent voters who detest the Rovian-style negative campaigning politics of division, seeming use of code words, and personal destruction (now widely covered in news reports as the Clinton campaign seeks to drive up Obama’s negatives more than make the case for her strengths against McCain):

Despite her largely centrist voting record in the Senate, Hillary Clinton is kryptonite to independent voters because she is one of the most polarizing figures in American politics. She is a brand-name reminder of Bush-Clinton-Bush era of hyper-partisanship that most independents want to leave behind.

“Hillary Clinton has the least traction with independents because her political persona calcified a long time ago,” says GOP strategist Rick Wilson. “She appeals to constituencies the Democrats already own and possesses none of her husband’s charisma and ability to connect with voters in the middle of the political spectrum. Hillary is John Kerry in a pantsuit to most independent voters.”

Obama, on the other hand, as a matter of style and substance represents a new generation of post-partisan politics. While Obama is certainly a center-left politician, he analyzes problems in a way that coolly criticizes the extremes of left and right. He reflects a more pragmatic approach to problem solving and brings an uncommon principled civility to politics. All this translates to unusual crossover appeal – Obama even managed to get 9 write-in votes at the conservative Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit.

Read it all.