BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Presidential candidates have been waging an active faith-based strategy leading into this coming Super Tuesday (February 5). But there hasn't been a lot of evidence about how those strategies may be working. Kim Lawton has more.

KIM LAWTON: Thanks, Bob. Despite the prominent role of religion this campaign season, exit pollsters have not asked religion questions of Democratic voters in most of the primary elections so far, and they've only asked limited religion questions of Republican voters.

But Zogby International has been asking about religious affiliation in its pre-election tracking polls, and Zogby gave RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY exclusive access to that information. Joining me now to help decipher it is University of Akron Professor John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. John, welcome. Since we know the least about Democrats, let's start with them. What do these numbers tell us about how people of faith are leaning when it comes to the Democratic candidates?

Professor JOHN GREEN (Senior Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and Director, Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, University of Akron, Ohio): Well Kim, there's a couple of interesting patterns here. Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have competed very evenly for the votes of white Protestants, both mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants. And in the states where Senator Obama has won, such as in Iowa, he tended to do a little bit better in that competition. Whereas the states where Senator Clinton won, she tended to do a little bit better -- so a lot of division among white Protestants. Part of the dynamic here, though, is age. Barack Obama seems to have done very well with younger evangelicals, younger mainline Protestants -- some of them very observant in religious terms, but also some of them perhaps not as observant. So he's kind of gotten both ends of the spectrum. Whereas Senator Clinton really appealed much more to older mainline Protestants and evangelicals.

LAWTON: And what about the Catholic vote, which is so important in this election?

Prof. GREEN: One of the really interesting things here is that Senator Clinton really has done a lot better in the Catholic vote in all of the early primary states. She's done very well among white Catholics, a critical constituency for the fall campaign. She's also done well among Hispanic Catholics. That's one area where Senator Obama has not been able to compete as effectively thus far.

LAWTON: We've seen this season, for the first time in a long time, Democratic candidates really reaching out to evangelicals. Can we tell how that's working for them so far?

Prof. GREEN: You know, it's a little bit hard to tell based on the data. But the Zogby data does suggest that a fair number of evangelicals chose to vote in Democratic primaries. For instance, in Iowa it looks that perhaps three out of every 10 voters were evangelical Protestants, and in Iowa they tended to go for Senator Obama. We saw also in South Carolina a fair number of evangelicals turn out to vote in the Democratic primary. There, African-American born-again Protestants tended to vote for Senator Obama, but the white evangelicals tended to divide between Senator Clinton and Senator Edwards. So there does seem to be a lot of foment on the Democratic side, and there may be evangelicals that are paying more attention to the Democrats than to the Republicans.

LAWTON: And in terms of the Republicans, how are the religious groups breaking down there?

Prof. GREEN: One of the most fascinating stories this year is the divisions in the evangelical community, as Governor Huckabee has done very well -- he's won the plurality of evangelicals in all of the states, but oftentimes that plurality hasn't been very big. And Senator McCain and even Mitt Romney have been able to compete very effectively for evangelical votes. There doesn't seem to be a consensus candidate for Republican evangelicals as of today.

LAWTON: And very briefly John, what do we see about how Mitt Romney's Mormon faith might be -- you know, what role that might be playing for him?

Prof. GREEN: Very mixed results. In some early states like Iowa, it does seem to be that evangelicals had some trouble voting for Mitt Romney. But in other states he did very well with evangelicals. And out West where the Mormon vote is large, Mitt Romney has benefited from their support.

LAWTON: Okay. John Green, thank you very much. For more of this conversation, go to my blog at One Nation.