Gallup Poll: Mississippi Most Religious State For Ninth Straight Year

Mississippi is America's most religious state — a position it's now held for nine straight years, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

According to the survey, 59 percent of Mississippi residents in 2016 say they are "very religious," followed by Alabama, with 56 percent, and Utah, with 54 percent.

Vermont is the least religious state, where 21 percent of its residents are classified as very religious. Two other New England states, Maine and Massachusetts, are the second- and third-least religious, with 23 percent and 25 percent, respectively, of residents saying they are "very religious," the survey found.

According to Gallup, most of the top 10 highly religious states over the past nine years have been in the South, except for Utah, which has consistently been in the top 10. In 2016, the only other non-Southern state in the top 10 was South Dakota.

The least religious states have typically been concentrated in the upper Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northwest regions. Vermont has been the least religious state for all but one of the last nine years, the exception being 2015 when New Hampshire topped the list, Gallup reported.

The survey's margins of error for individual states are no greater than plus or minus 6 percentage points; the margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points in most states.

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