WASHINGTON--The presidential election this year may come down to the "religion gap." According to a USA Today report, voters who attend church regularly tend to vote for Republicans, and those who don't get to church as often or not at all tend to vote for Democrats.

Church goers could represent as many as one-quarter of voters. That's how many registered and active voters said they attended church every week, according to a National Survey of Religion and Politics taken by the University of Akron to study the 2000 vote.

This group of voters has been eyed by both Presidential candidates in 2004, as President Bush and presidential candidate John Kerry are actively seeking the religious vote.

Bush has been courting people of faith at least since 2000. His most recent effort was an e-mail sent to Pennsylvania supporters asking congregations to appoint volunteer coordinators for his campaign.

Kerry is also jumping on the church bus. USA Today reported that Kerry recently hired a "director of religious outreach": Mara Vanderslice, an evangelical Christian who will work on Kerry's campaign and its appeal to people of faith.

"The most important thing to start with are opportunities for John Kerry to share more openly with the American electorate about his faith experience, how it's inspired his commitment in public service and how it's influenced his life," she said. The campaign is working on a "people of faith network" on the campaign Web site, as a preliminary step.

But Democrats struggle to obtain the faith vote because religious people tend to feel more conservative about social issues such as abortion, gay rights and women's rights.

According to John Green, a University of Akron political scientist who studies religion and politics, "More observant people tend to have more traditional morality, and they moved in a more conservative direction because of those issues."

These voters will apparently cross religious lines to vote their faith convictions. Bush, a Methodist, has the support of Catholics who attend Mass every week. Kerry, a Catholic, is ahead among Catholics who don't attend Mass regularly. But Kerry faces objections from conservative Catholics over his support of abortion rights.

There are exceptions among voters of faith. African-American church goers, for example, remain as Democratic as African-Americans who do not attend church. And church attendance has made little impact on Hispanic voting tendencies.

But among white voters church attendance has created a bigger gap than the gender gap.