Brett Arends of the Boston Herald has the scoop on an ARG poll to be released later this week:

For seven years, conventional wisdom has said that the state's pivotal independent voters would line up behind maverick Sen. John McCain, as they did so famously in the 2000 GOP primary. But new polling data, to be released later this week, will suggest that might no longer be the case.

Manchester, N.H.-based American Research Group finds that McCain's popularity among New Hampshire's independent voters has collapsed.

"John McCain is tanking," says ARG president Dick Bennett. "That's the big thing [we're finding]. In New Hampshire a year ago he got 49 percent among independent voters. That number's way down, to 29 percent now."

Arends reports Bennett is finding similar trends in other states which he says is attributable to McCain's strong ties to President Bush and his support for the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.