The faith of candidates and of voters may play an important role in the 2008 presidential election, according to two new public opinion surveys.

The Sacred Heart University Polling Institute, based in Fairfield, Conn., found that 60.7 percent of Americans believe a presidential candidate should be "a religious person," while 39.3 percent do not.

Asked whether their own religious beliefs influence their vote, respondents were evenly split --- 48.4 percent said their own faith always or sometimes guides their views on politics, while 48.4 percent said it seldom or never guides their views. The remaining 3.2 percent were unsure.

A separate survey released in Washington by Gallup Poll News Service found that 66 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of independents said religion was "very important" in their own lives. Only 10 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of independents said it was "not very important."

Both the Sacred Heart and Gallup polls were made public June 14. The margins of error were plus or minus 3 percentage points for the Sacred Heart survey and 2 percentage points for Gallup.

A little more than a quarter of the respondents to the Sacred Heart poll, or 27.8 percent, said they considered a candidate's religious affiliation relevant to their decisions on how to vote. Two-thirds, or 66 percent, said it was not and 6.3 percent were unsure.

June-Ann Greeley, an assistant professor of religious studies at Sacred Heart and director of the university's Center of Catholic Thought, Ethics and Culture, said the poll results show that for most Americans religion is important in selecting a candidate.

"We (Americans) think we can understand something meaningful about a person, a politician, if we have a sense of his/her religious beliefs because, clearly, religious belief is still esteemed by a majority of Americans," Greeley said in a news release.

She noted, however, that religion could have a positive or negative effect on a voter's support for a candidate. The 27.8 percent of voters who said religion is relevant could use it as a reason to back one candidate or to oppose another, she said.

The Gallup survey, conducted May 10-13, found that on average 56 percent of Americans considered themselves "very religious," 26 percent said they were "fairly religious" and 17 percent said they were "not very religious."

Those figures have remained more or less steady over the past five years, ranging from a high of 65 percent in September 2002 to a low of 55 percent in May 2005.

There were considerable differences, however, when race was factored in along with party affiliations. Among blacks, 83 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of independents said religion was very important to them. The sample size for black Republicans was considered too small to provide meaningful data.

Among all other racial groups, 50 percent of Democrats, 45 percent of independents and 66 percent of Republicans said they were very religious.

Women were more likely than men to consider themselves very religious, by a margin of 65 percent to 49 percent. They were also more likely to be Democratic than men, by 60 percent to 40 percent.

"There is a significant relationship between being religious and identifying with the Republican Party among whites and other nonblack groups," said a Gallup commentary on the polling data. "Blacks defy this pattern; they are both highly religious and highly likely to identify as Democrats."

The Sacred Heart survey also asked respondents to name "the issues they were most concerned about." With multiple answers allowed, 51.2 percent cited the war in Iraq, 23.2 percent the price of gasoline, 12.3 percent the cost of and access to health care, 10.5 percent "immigration policy/illegal aliens," and 8.4 percent the poor economy. The rest of the answers were divided among more than four dozen issues.

The leading Republican presidential candidates in the Sacred Heart poll were former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (38.6 percent), former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (19.3 percent), U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona (17.9 percent) and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee (9 percent).

Among Democrats, respondents ranked Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York first, with 54 percent, followed by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois (20.5 percent), former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina (12.1 percent) and former Vice President Al Gore (5.4 percent).

Neither Gore nor Thompson has formally declared himself a candidate for president.

---CNS