Relentless efforts by former President Donald Trump and his true believers in politics and the media have convinced millions of Americans that Joe Biden is a fraudulent President who seized power in a stolen election.

Among Republicans, 78% believe Biden did not win the election and 54% believe that there is solid evidence to support such a view, according to the poll, even though no evidence exists and multiple courts and states and the US Congress certified a victory that Trump's Justice Department said was untainted by significant fraud.

Among Republicans who say Trump should be the leader of the party, 88% believe Biden lost the election.

Paradoxically, Republicans are more likely to say that democracy is under attack than Democrats.

Please remember that," Trump said at a rally in Arizona in June that itself highlighted a sham audit orchestrated by Republicans of 2020 election votes in crucial Maricopa County that helped Biden win the state.

'Democracy is not a football'

Most Americans don't spend much time pondering democracy and constitutional guardrails -- a subject that has become an obsession for Beltway media and lawmakers in the Trump era.

The cost of health care, the pandemic, kids trying to get back to school, expiring unemployment benefits and eviction moratoriums, and a homelessness crisis highlighted by the California recall election are more likely to concern most people.

Gavin Newsom, fresh off his defeat of the recall effort that critics saw as the epitome of an undemocratic exercise, reflected on how political freedoms need to be protected from the likes of Trump, who had said the California election was "rigged" before the returns had even come in.

It's easy to imagine a presidential debate when Trump forces rivals to buy into his own false conceit that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

If the California recall election is any guide, Trump acolytes will go into the midterms warning that any Democratic victories, especially where mail-in voting is heavily used, will be fraudulent even though Republicans are predicted to do well.

The former President has also worked hard, using the carrot of his valuable endorsement, to ensure that GOP candidates up and down the midterm ballot buy into his face-saving and untrue narrative that he won the last election.

He has, for instance, endorsed Alabama's Rep.

In another of his many endorsements countrywide, Trump this week backed Kristina Karamo, a Republican running for secretary of state in the Wolverine State, praising her as "strong on Crime, including the massive Crime of Election Fraud." It was a move that underscored how, alongside the ideological gulfs between Republicans and Democrats, there is a new divide -- between political hopefuls who support democracy and those prepared to deny it.