Do the Soft 404 and Not Found Links effect google priority

[rashidfarooq]

I have about "soft 404" and 1852 "Not Found" links in google webmaster tools. I am getting very low traffic from google now than earlier.
I want to know If I do not remove the soft 404s and "Not Found" Links does it effect my SEO and traffic from google?

[HTMLBasicTutor]

I would fix these whether they affect your ranking in the search engines or not.

Someone linked to you incorrectly. Someone else is going to click that link (besides the search bots following it). That results in lost traffic and you want to avoid that.

Note: there was/is a problem that Google is picking up the linked text instead of the actual link for that text and reporting it as a not found page.