There’s been a significant decline over the past year in voters who think their vote will be counted accurately, a trend driven mainly by Republicans — most of whom still believe false claims that President Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, according to a new NBC News poll

Two-thirds, or 66 percent of registered voters, are optimistic that the vote will count accurately. This is a decrease from 85 percent who said so in October 2020. 29% say that they don’t believe their votes will be accurately counted in the future, as opposed to 11% who stated the same one year ago.

Although Democrats remain steady (89%) say they are confident that their vote will count accurately), Republicans have lost confidence in the election. This is because former President Donald Trump spent much time making this happen. baseless and false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Last year, almost 85% of Republicans felt confident that the vote would be counted correctly. That’s about equal to what Democrats said. On the other hand, only 41 percent believe that their vote will count accurately, and 50 percent disagree.

There’s been a slight uptick in distrust among independents, too — from 84 percent confident and 13 percent not confident in October 2020 to 76 percent confident and 22 percent not confident now.

While only 22 percent of Republican adults think that Biden was legitimately reelected, 71 percent and 93 percent respectively of Democrats believe Biden’s legitimacy was confirmed by them.

Overall, 58% of Americans believe that Biden was legally elected. Only 38% disagree. The legitimacy of Biden’s election is believed by majorities in most of the demographic groups. Only 35% of rural voters and 42% of whites with no college degrees, as well as 21% of people who have not been vaccinated for Covid-19, believe that Biden’s victory was valid.

Comparatively, public trust in the legitimacy and validity of the 2000 Florida presidential election was at a similar level after it was decided by the Supreme Court.

Between January 2001 and November 2002, the percentage of adults who believed President George W. Bush was elected legitimately increased from 55% to 58%, while the proportion who thought it wasn’t legitimate fell from 39% to 35%.

The vast majority (almost 90%) of Republicans said Bush’s election was valid. But, by November, the percentage of Democrats saying the same increased from 20% to 22%.

The NBC News poll was conducted Oct. 23-26 of 1,000 adults — 650 of whom were reached only by cellphone — and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

For the 820 voters registered in this poll, there is a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage point.