Still angry, buddy? You got what you wanted. Cheer up. Maybe you're still hung over from celebrating?
It sounds like you are trying to decide how people should think of themselves, rather than letting them do so themselves.
I'll grant that a lot of people who don't belong to any church may consider themselves still Protestant. I'm just saying they're less likely to do so than Catholics who may be "cultural Catholics" without accepting the dogmas of their church, somewhat like Jews who may consider themselves Jewish without having any belief in God at all.
Once upon a time, Protestants were very similar. In some parts of the world (Scotland, Ireland) or in some parts of the country they still are, but that intense identification began to decline among Protestants before it did among Catholics.
Look at the Pew graphic. The category for those who don't fall into the other categories is "religiously unaffiliated." It's not "atheist" or "agnostic" or "unbeliever," though people who describe themselves as such on other occasions would be considered "religiously unaffiliated" by Pew. I submit that a lot of those people were born Protestant. More of them were Protestants than Catholics, I would say, even when you take their proportions in the population into account.
Now that's changing. More Catholics are joining the "religiously unaffiliated" category, but for a long time lukewarm, unreligious, even atheistic Catholics still considered themselves "Catholic" to a greater degree than Protestants did.
Here is a map of the predominant religions by state. In those four Northwestern states "No Religion" or "Unaffiliated" is the top choice. I don't think most of those people were born Catholic.
Things are changing, though. Lately, the most "unchurched" region of the country is Northern New England. A lot of former Catholics have joined former Protestants in those states. But there's always a time lag on these things.
There is no need for the personal attack and mind reading.
People that don’t belong to any church, perhaps never have, that probably have never been baptized, and that might not even know what “Protestant” is, but who consider themselves Christians, are placed into the Protestant category, if they are not members of the Catholic church.
People who don’t have any particular religion and are not Christians, but believe in a deity, or deities, are “religiously unaffiliated, which often includes atheists, depending on how detailed the poll is. PEW seems to have lumped in the atheists with the religiously unaffiliated, so far.
Catholic, of course, means Catholic. Those who are members of the Catholic denomination.
