The election showed the U.S. is increasingly divided by religion.

U.S. Jews and the religiously unaffiliated are growing kilometres (well, miles) apart from white evangelical Christians, three out of four of whom voted Republican.

American Catholics also significantly shifted to the Democrats. So did mainline Protestants, who tend to be more liberal than evangelicals.

To vote Democrat, many American Catholics had to ignore the instructions of high-profile bishops who urged adherents to not vote for a candidate like Obama, who is pro-choice on abortion.

A few imprudent bishops even warned tens of millions of faithful American Catholics that casting a ballot for Obama could threaten their immortal souls. The Democrats gained 54 per cent of the Catholic vote in this election, seven percentage points higher than in 2004, according to polling by the independent Pew Forum. The Hispanic Catholic vote for the Democrats was even higher.

What the Pew poll reveals is that many of the United States' 75 million self-declared Catholics are following their own consciences.

"The laity repudiated [Catholic bishops'] description of the Democratic Party as the party of death," said prominent Jesuit scholar Thomas Reese, of Georgetown University.

Most American Catholics followed more nuanced church teachings (such as the 2007 document, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship), which urge Catholics to avoid becoming single-issue voters.

Many U.S. Catholics who oppose abortion believe there are other grave ethical problems to address, such as the collapsing economy, the Iraq war and political corruption.

Jews make up a much smaller voting group in the U.S. than Catholics. But it's still crucial that four out of five Jews ignored the pleadings of prominent Jewish officials, politicians and rabbis and chose Obama.

Republicans and Jewish leaders had campaigned that it's dangerous for Jews to vote for Obama. They claimed he is not a strong enough supporter of Israel's right to defend itself against threats from Muslim neighbours, particularly Iran. But, like most American Catholics, most American Jews decided to think for themselves. In doing so, Jews dramatically distanced themselves from white evangelicals, even when some born-again preachers are becoming staunch defenders of Israel for theological reasons.

It's also fascinating to watch how the religiously unaffiliated - the more than one out of 10 Americans who consider themselves atheists, agnostics and "secular-but-spiritual" voters - are moving in a wave to the Democrats.

This year, a growing portion of the religiously unaffiliated, three out of four, voted for the Democrats, according to the Pew Forum.

Finally, the Council on American-Islamic Relations unveiled a poll Friday suggesting nine out of 10 U.S. Muslims voted for Obama. Muslims' decisive shift to the Democratic Party reflects another loss for the Republicans.

The strongest lesson suggested by these statistics is that John McCain's attempt to grab white evangelical voters by picking Sarah Palin as vice-presidential candidate may have backfired.

It alienated many Catholics, mainline Protestants, Jews and Muslims, who are are coming to see the Republican party as increasingly beholden to the hard-core Christian right.

The next few years will no doubt see more spiritually moderate Republicans trying to seize back control of their Grand Old Party.

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