Good news, atheists! You’re out of the basement of politics!

I used to think that being an atheist was the absolute worst thing possible in American politics.

You could be almost anything else in politics besides a non-believer and still get elected. A lesbian daughter of illegal immigrants who campaigned on transgender rights and urged a sympathetic understanding of the root causes of al-Qaida terrorism could get elected, so long as the sister said she was down with Jesus.

But a well-qualified candidate who admitted publicly he or she wasn’t so sure about the whole God thing? Forget about it.

Well, good news, atheists! You are officially out of the basement!

According to a poll conducted by Gallup recently, Democrats, independents and Republicans all said they would be least likely to vote for somebody identified as a “socialist,” even when “atheist” was included in the list of choices. According to the poll, 59 percent of Democrats would consider voting for a socialist, along with 49 percent of independents and 33 percent of Republicans.

Those were the lowest percentages on a list of choices that also included evangelical Christians, Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Hispanics, blacks, woman and gays or lesbians. All scored higher on the list than did socialists or atheists, who came in second last. (A total of 45 percent of Republicans said they’d vote for an atheist or a Muslim.)

Equally interesting were the groups that got the most support: Republicans — by 95 percent — said they’d be willing to vote for a Jewish person for president. The largest percentage of independents — 92 percent — said they’d vote for a Catholic. And the most popular choice among Democrats — at 97 percent — was a woman. (The poll was actually taken June 2-7, so those Democrats obviously have a particular woman in mind.)

But asked straight up if they’d vote for a generally well-qualified person who won their party’s nomination but who happened to be a socialist, 50 percent of people surveyed said no, while 47 percent said yes. (If that person happened to be an atheist, however, 58 percent would vote for him or her, while 40 percent would not.)

The most popular choice, winning 93 percent support and just 6 percent opposition? A Catholic. But probably not the current pope, who often sounds like a socialist in his public statements about human caused climate change, wealth and greed. Still, in a nation that once wondered whether it was ready for a Catholic president, and John F. Kennedy had to reassure the nation his decisions would be guided by Constitution and not catechism, that’s progress.

Obviously, the poll’s results have import for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has called himself a democratic socialist even as he seeks the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Sanders has not tried to hide his liberalism, campaigning for free college tuition at public colleges and universities, expanding Social Security, increasing the minimum wage, a single-payer, Medicare-for-all-style health care system, a national infrastructure building program and higher taxes on the very wealthy to pay for it all.

And the democratic socialist label hasn’t hurt him with fundraising or crowds. He’s reportedly raised $15 million in the last two months, and this week drew 10,000 people to a rally in Madison, Wis.

But the results also show that the word “socialist” still has powerful negative political implications in America, despite the fact that the country has had socialist-type programs in place since the 1930s (Social Security) or the 1960s (Medicare). And that’s to say nothing of corporate socialism, in which the government directly or indirectly subsidizes private companies, allowing them to increase profits by avoiding certain costs.

It also comes at a time that the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life has demonstrated the number of people in the United States who claim Christian faith has fallen, while the number of people unaffiliated with religion or affiliated with non-Christian religions is rising.

In a study released in May, Pew found the number of people who call themselves Christian fell from 78.4 percent in 2007 to 70.6 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, over the same period, the unaffiliated group grew from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent, and those subscribing to non-Christian religions rose from 4.7 percent to 5.9 percent.