The new Field Poll out this morning obviously shows Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton with a strong lead among California voters. But the poll is also full of data that points to some real strong undercurrents favoring Sen. Barack Obama.

For starters, while Clinton leads Obama by 14 percentage points among those surveyed (36%-22%), that lead has shrunk in the last few months. In fact, the fastest growing group of Democratic presidential primary voters in the Field survey are those who are undecided.

In March, only 9% of those polled fell into this category; now 20% say they are undecided.

Also good news for the Illinois senator is the new poll’s finding that he has a slight lead (30%-27%) among independent voters. These non-partisan (”decline to state” a party) voters are allowed to vote in the February 5 Democratic primary, but not in the GOP contest. Granted, Field projects that the overwhelming majority of Democratic primary votes will be cast by actual Dems. But if the independent voters get engaged… that could be a boost for Obama.

More intriguing is what might happen should the former first lady lose her title — both here and across the nation — as the “most electable” candidate in the Democratic field. If so, Obama could again get a California boost… as Field finds that he has higher positive opinion rankings (63%-52%) and much lower negatives (23%-42%) than Clinton.

The poll then asks voters what they will do if the race is down to two front runners by the time they cast their ballot. The scenario Field uses assumes that former Sen. John Edwards would be gone if he doesn’t place well in either Iowa or New Hampshire. If that was the case, 40% of the Edwards voters say they’d go to Obama, versus 24% for Clinton.

(The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 points, so take that as your grain of salt.)

Granted, this analysis is swimming upstream against the poll’s conventional wisdom –namely, that Clinton has a strong in the Golden State and is likely to win the state’s votes. But it does remind us that the race is far from over.