NEW YORK, Oct 9: One out of five US adults do not identify with a specific religion, and the number of Protestants has for the first time dipped significantly below 50 per cent, according to a poll released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre.

Pew researchers said the growing ranks of those with no religious affiliation suggests that Americans slowly may be becoming less religious.

The number of adults who consider themselves atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” has increased from about 15 per cent to nearly 20 per cent in the last five years, the highest percentage ever for that group in Pew polling.

Fifty-eight per cent of Americans still say religion is very important in their lives, far exceeding the value given to religion by people in Britain, France, Germany or Spain, Pew said.

The survey by the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion & Public Life also found that many of the country’s 46 million adults who don’t claim a religion remain religious and spiritual in some way even though most are not seeking a denomination.

Seventy-three per cent of US adults are Christian, but the number of Protestants dropped to 48 per cent in 2012 from 50 per cent in 2011 and 53 per cent in 2007, the poll showed. Pew said it was the first time its surveys had found Protestants to no longer make up at least half of the overall population.

Recently the religiously unaffiliated have increasingly voted Democratic, Pew said, with exit polls conducted by a consortium of news organisations showing a rise from 61 per cent in the 2000 presidential election to 75 per cent in 2008.

Twenty-four per cent of the religiously unaffiliated were Democratic or Democratic-leaning registered voters in 2012, compared with only 11 per cent of the unaffiliated who said they were Republican or Republican-leaning voters.

Pew said the findings were based on several surveys, including most recently a national telephone poll of 2,973 adults that was conducted between June 28 and July 9, 2012 and an additional 511 interviews with religiously unaffiliated adults between June 28 and July 10.—Reuters