I’m not much of a poll watcher, but I’m pretty sure people in the White House are looking at these numbers with a little concern:

The shifting attitude among independent voters, in fact, is the most significant change to emerge from a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, completed just last week. In that survey, Mr. Obama’s job-approval rating among Americans overall slipped a notch, to 56% from 61% in April. That’s not much of a drop, and is in keeping with the pattern for a new president at this point in his term.

But the slide was much more pronounced among self-identified purely independent voters — that is, Americans who express no loyalty to either party.

Among these people, who tend to reside in the middle of the ideological spectrum, the president’s job-approval rating fell to 45% from 60% in April.

The problem for Republicans of course, is that they aren’t exactly proving themselves an attractive (or even merely viable) alternative.

So. The center got turned off by Republicans over the last eight years, and now might be getting turned off by Democrats, too. Where will they go? Uh… want to ask me one I know the answer to?