A new national Gallup poll was released July 6th, and it included thee additional candidates on top of President Barack Obama, and former Governor Mitt Romney. These candidates were Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party.

The drop in support during the campaign is likely due to two factors. First, historically, third-party candidates’ support typically drops as the campaign approaches Election Day, perhaps because voters realize the candidates have little chance to win. Second, generally speaking, support for third-party candidates tends to be higher in the broader pool of registered voters than in the smaller group of actual voters.

Lower-profile third-party candidates also tend to receive higher support in preference polls when included in the list of candidates than they receive in the actual vote. Gallup has asked the vote-choice question that includes minor-party candidates in each election year since 1996, including in the fall, when Gallup begins measuring likely voters’ preferences. In every instance, the available registered and likely voter estimates exceeded the actual percentage of the vote the candidate received in the election.

Read the whole article on Gallup: Little Support for Third-Party Candidates in 2012 Election

More additional media coverage of this new Gallup poll can be found at Reason and Slate

President Obama called the daughter of a restaurant owner who died just a couple hours after hosting him Friday during a campaign stop in Akron, Ohio.

For those awaiting the final act in what has been a strikingly swift political fall from grace, here ya go:

Capping a very rough month of bad publicity stemming from his failure to make the ballot after nominating petition snafu, Michigan GOP Rep. Thad McCotter announced his resignation Friday afternoon.

From his statement:

Today I have resigned from the office of United States Representative for Michigan's 11th Congressional District.

After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family. As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave.

He also assails recent "calumnies, indignities, and deceits" in his statement, hinting that he is planning to exit as Thad the Victim.

For those unaware of those recent events, it began with his bizarre and quixotic bid for the White House, which was essentially over before it began.

Then, in a shocking and humiliating turn of events, his attempt to land softly back in his gerrymandered House seat failed when he failed to secure enough valid signatures to qualify for the August primary ballot. What was an embarrassment became a matter for the courts when allegations of fraud popped up in his ballot petitions.

McCotter briefly pondered a write-in bid for his seat, before deciding last month to abandon that effort.

Then came the almost comical revelation just yesterday that McCotter had, his presidential campaign in tatters, turned his attention not to his work as a U.S. Representative, but rather to penning a TV sitcom/variety show starring himself. This last revelation, apparently, was the final straw.

McCotter's 11th district, made more Republican by the GOP-led gerrymandering of the state last year, was already an open seat due to McCotter's failure to qualify for the ballot. It is unclear yet if a special election will be necessitated by McCotter's resignation, given that we are now just four months away from the general election. The primary for this seat is next month, with Republicans seeking to boost the write-in candidacy of former state senator Nancy Cassis, since tea party devotee Kerry Bentvolio is the only Republican actually on the ballot. Syed Taj is considered the frontrunner on the Democratic side.

Ginger White, the woman who claimed having an extramarital affair with Herman Cain just before he dropped out of the presidential race, writes about the decision to come forward for Salon.

"Seven months after the whole spectacle went down, Herman Cain has continued his career as a political eccentric -- writing books, landing speaking engagements and hosting his own Web TV network. Meanwhile, I have been called a whore, a liar and a home wrecker. No one will employ me."

Donald Trump hasn't decided whether he'll attend the Republican national convention, Politico reports.

Said a top aide: "He's considering it. Many people want him to go, but he's considering it. He's got an extremely busy schedule and it all depends on other commitments that he has."

Just two months ago Trump himself floated the idea of being the keynote speaker.

Sources close to Mitt Romney tell the New York Daily News "that during a three-day retreat he hosted late last month for big-time Republican contributors and party mandarins at Park City, Utah, the candidate also found time to squeeze in the first two rounds of what staffers call 'debate prep.'"

"Romney convened six to eight campaign aides around a conference table... They sorted through a variety of topics sure to come up in the three Presidential debates, like the state of the economy and the war in Afghanistan, and kicked around the best 'test responses' to questions they expect Obama and debate moderators will toss at the ex-Massachusetts governor."

"More such encounters are expected over the summer, but what one source called 'podium practices' with an Obama surrogate won't happen for awhile -- mainly because Romney doesn't care for them all that much."

The owner of an Akron restaurant where President Obama stopped for breakfast this morning died, apparently of a heart attack, shortly after meeting him, the Akron Beacon Journal reports.

John Huntsman, who was discussed as a possible Americans Elect candidate, continues his move away from the GOP. He will not be attending this years Republican Convention. Yahoo News has the story.

“‘I will not be attending this year’s convention, nor any Republican convention in the future, until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States?a future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits,’ Huntsman said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.”

Attack ads must attack quickly in the ever-shortening news cycle. That was apparent Friday when Crossroads GPS released a spot slamming Obama for a high unemployment rate at 9:49 a.m. ? a whole 79 minutes after the data became public.

New York Times: "While working on the fifth volume of his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro -- famous both for the size of his books and how long it takes him to write them -- is immersed in another project, too. The new book is not a memoir, exactly, he said in a telephone interview from his summer home on Long Island, but an account of how he came to write the Johnson biography and its predecessor, The Power Broker, a biography of the developer and city planner Robert Moses."