From the POLITICO
Blog by David Mark March 1, 2008

A final big-state showdown is scheduled for April 22 in Pennsylvania--a state that is just under one-third Catholic.

"The Catholic vote is absolutely critical in some of the major markets like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. In Pittsburgh it can be as much as 50 percent of the [primary] vote," said Jon Delano, adjunct professor of Public Policy and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "The question is how much does the religious part play in how they cast their ballot."

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who represents one of the most heavily Catholic metropolitan areas in the nation, said the Catholic vote in his Pittsburgh-based district is still very much up for grabs but Clinton has to be considered the front-runner.

"She's the person to beat in Pennsylvania. President Clinton is very popular in our neck of the woods," Doyle said. "This is Hillary's race to lose."

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), another Pittsburgh-area congressman, said Catholic voters in his district "are a very sizable voting bloc. But it’s still fluid – and they haven’t really started to campaign here."

Doyle, Altmire and Rep. John Murtha, the other Democrat who represents western Pennsylvania--all Catholics--have not endorsed a candidate for the nomination.

Despite Obama's struggles to gain traction among Catholics, Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor and the former dean of the Catholic University School of Law, insists that in a general election matchup with John McCain, Obama would prove popular with Catholic voters.

"Senator Obama has captured better than any of the other candidates a concern that religion has been used as a wedge issue – that there has been a deliberate effort on the part of conservatives to basically try and gain political advantage by pointing out how much Democrats disrespect religion," said Kmiec, who served as a legal adviser to Republican Mitt Romney. "On the other side, Democrats have been too quick to disregard the significance of faith in people’s lives – that they have been too quick to embrace wholesale secularism."