A majority of Americans are pessimistic about the state of moral values in the United States, according to a new Gallup poll.

Seventy-two percent say moral values in the country as a whole are getting worse, while 44pc rate the current state of moral values as poor.

In 2012, 73pc said moral values were getting worse, while 43pc said the current state of values was poor.

Twenty percent now say values are getting better, and six percent say they are staying the same.

The current reading is similar to what Gallup measured from 2006 to 2010, but is up slightly compared with 2002 to 2005, when 40pc or less said moral values were poor.

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats and independents to have negative assessments of moral values.

However, majorities of all partisan groups have negative views of morals.  

Also, Americans who are married, those who are upper- and middle-income, and those who attend church regularly tend to have more negative views of moral values in the U.S. than their counterparts.

Gallup’s survery also showed that Americans’ views toward a number of moral issues have shifted significantly since 2001.  

Their acceptance of homosexual relations has increased the most, up 19 percentage points in the past 12 years — to a record high of 59pc today. Americans’ tolerance toward having a baby outside of marriage is also now much greater, up 15 points since 2001, to the current 60pc.

Americans have also become significantly more accepting of sex between unmarried people, divorce, embryonic stem cell research, polygamy, and cloning humans. The only issue that Americans have become significantly less accepting of over the last 12 years is medical testing on animals.

Americans’ views of the moral acceptability of 10 of the 19 items Gallup asked about have not changed significantly over time, shifting less than five points since they were first measured.

A majority of Americans continue to say seven of the 19 items measured are morally wrong — married men and women having an affair, cloning humans, polygamy, suicide, pornography, sex between teenagers (measured for the first time this year), and cloning animals.  

Attitudes toward two items — doctor-assisted suicide and abortion — are fairly evenly split, with less than half of Americans seeing each as either morally acceptable or morally unacceptable

A majority of Americans see all other items included in the list this year as morally acceptable.

Birth control tops the list as the most acceptable, seen as such by 91pc of Americans, while having an extramarital affair is the least morally acceptable, at six percent.