Many commentators have talked about the influence of religion in the presidential race.

But few of them give a context of the current religious population in America.

Using Pew Forum’s religious affiliation numbers released in March, we can see how many people are in each candidate’s specific religion.

Of course, the limitation here is in using only broad categories and ignoring how active or likely to participate each sect will be. Still, numbers help to get a picture of what each candidate’s ground support could be.

John McCain was raised Episcopalian and now is a non-baptized Baptist who attends services at a Southern Baptist Convention church. That sect is 14.6 million strong, with the larger evangelical Baptist tradition boasting an additional 9 million. The broader category, “Evangelical Protestant Churches” is the largest faith group in the nation, with 57 million members.

Hillary Clinton is a United Methodist (disclosure: So is the author), a denomination that has 5.1 percent of the population. That’s 11 million people who make any gathering into an opportunity to eat, trust me on that one.

Barack Obama is a United Church of Christ follower, a denomination that’s 0.5 percent of the population. From the info his campaign uses, 99 percent of the UCC is white, meaning Obama’s traditionally black church experience is directly relevant to 0.005 percent of the U.S. population.

That’s an infinitesimally small 10,890 people in the black tradition of the UCC. The larger, not traditionally black, part of the UCC still numbers only 1 million faithful.

The UCC falls under the same umbrella (”Mainline Protestant Churches”) as Clinton’s faith. Those Protestants total 39.4 million. They are outnumbered only by McCain’s blanket faith (those 57 million mentioned above) and “Catholics” (52 million) (disclosure: I’m getting married to a Catholic this summer).

But I’m adding two groups Obama polls exceedingly well with, “Historically Black Churches” is the fifth biggest category with 15 million and “Unaffiliated” is the fourth biggest with 35 million.

Again discounting the significant differences, and likely crossovers, between several faiths and judging only by their banner groups, McCain’s support numbers 57 million, Clinton’s 39.5 million and Obama somewhere between 51 million (unaffiliated, black and UCC) and 89.4 million (adding the rest of the mainline Protestants).

Clinton can’t count on the unaffiliated against McCain and voting behavior of blacks in recent contests indicates the black support might not carry to her over if she is the nominee, so despite being the only candidate with no major religious controversies, she seems the weakest religious candidate on paper.

The Republican who also happens to shy away from religious talk, McCain, has either a moderate advantage or a devastating disadvantage against Obama – at least on paper.

Next week I’ll look at the numbers for the religious problem areas for candidates including Obama’s problem with Judaism and the Rev. Wright as well as McCain’s with Catholicism and the Rev. John Hagee, Clinton pretty much gets a pass.

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