Evangelical Christians who have greatly influenced recent US elections are seen playing a different but once again key role in this November's White House race and analysts say both parties are keen to woo them.
"I think it (the evangelical vote) will be different this time round. The evangelical community is more fractured than it has been in the past," said Allen Hertzke, director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.
One in four US adults count themselves as evangelical or "born-again" Christian, giving them electoral clout in a country where religion and politics often mix.
All of the contenders in the presidential race - Republican presumptive nominee John McCain and Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are battling for the Democratic crown - are Protestant Christians.
Obama importantly in evangelical eyes had an adult "conversion experience" into the United Church of Christ while Clinton was raised a Methodist. McCain grew up in the mainline Episcopal faith but now attends a Baptist church in Phoenix.
Analysts say if Obama is the Democratic nominee he could make inroads into this Republican bloc because of his frank talk about faith and appeal to young evangelicals.
McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam and Arizona senator, faces the difficulty of wooing skeptical religious conservatives within his own party who view him as soft on some of their core issues, such as stem-cell research and gay marriage.
This could dampen their enthusiasm to turn out and vote the way they did in 2004, when 78 per cent of white evangelicals who cast ballots did so for President George W Bush.
But Clinton, a New York senator who is an object of wrath in many conservative Christian circles because of her liberal positions and feminist image, could draw them to the polls for McCain in numbers that a match-up with Obama might not.
Opinion polls show most white evangelicals firmly in the Republican camp. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows McCain with a 70 to 25 percent lead over Obama and about the same margin over Clinton with this group.
But hard-core conservative Christians in the Republican Party are unhappy with McCain on many grounds, ranging from his failure to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage to his past criticism of leaders in the movement.
So while polls may show him with an almost three to one edge he may find that some of those who have favored him in surveys will not show up to vote for him at the ballot box.
"Evangelicals lean Republican to such an extent that Republicans cannot win without them," said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
