While John McCain has been running essentially even with both Democratic hopefuls in its daily tracking polls, Gallup took a look under the hood of the numbers collected between March 7-29 to see what different dynamics played into match-ups between McCain and Obama or Clinton.

Gallup’s topline findings:

– Clinton does better than Obama against McCain in the three ideological groups of white Democrats.She does slightly better than Obama among liberals, 13 points better among moderates, and 28 points better among conservative Democrats. Obama wins conservative Democrats in a race against McCain by only 50 percent to 35 percent.
– Obama does better than Clinton against McCain among independents and Republicans, an argument he has been making in terms of his ability to make inroads in traditionally GOP states. McCain beats either Democrat handily among “pure” independents, but Obama is somewhat more competitive in this group than Clinton, trailing McCain by 13 points versus her 25 point disadvantage. And, while the difference isn’t large (9 points) Obama runs better than Clinton among moderate and liberal Republicans.