The poll found that 66 percent of likely voters, regardless of party affiliation, see Obama is a unifier with McCain coming in right behind with 59 percent of those surveyed, the poll released Monday said.

A majority of those interviewed for the poll, 57 percent, found Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would further contribute to the partisan rancor in Washington, while 47 percent felt the same way about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is a distant second behind McCain in the Republican contest.

Along party lines, Democrats see Obama as the more unifying candidate over Clinton by 14 points and McCain beats out Huckabee among likely Republican voters by a margin of 22 percentage points.

Likely independent voters see Obama and McCain as the candidates more capable of unifying American politics, with Clinton sparking the opposite reaction by a 2-to-1 margin.

President George Bush ran in 2000 as a unifying candidate and the Gallup poll found the public anxious to move American politics beyond partisan bickering that inevitably haunted the Bush White House.

The poll surveyed 510 American adults from Feb. 8 – 10 in telephone interviews and has a sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.