Check the party breakdown. If you don't poll many Republicans, of course you're going to get the results that you want, err I mean results like that.
The party breakdown looks the way it does because the R brand is toxic and people aren't self-identifying that way.
Let's see, exit polls say 33% Republican, Rasmussen finds 33% Republican, but yet Newsweek finds 22% and CBSNews/NYT finds 23%? Come on now.
People are much more likely to identify with a party, rather than as an independent, when they've literally just voted for a major party candidate. (You didn't note that the Democratic number from exit polls to NYT stayed static at 39%, instead of increasing.) That makes sense. Now it's several months later, and one party that was reasonably well organized in '08 has gone out into the wilderness and lacks a public face. People who identified as Democratic strongly, still have Obama to cheer on and still largely approve of him. There are a lot of people who voted for McCain/PALIN and called themselves Republican in November, who now are feeling disconnected from the party because there is no figure for them to identify with and they don't like how that party is doing in Congress. So they identify as Independent, and are registering unhappiness for the President they didn't vote for. None of this is new.
