Ross Douthat had a column called "Why do so many Americans think the election was stolen?" which started with a good point: that a lot of people are inclined to believe in conspiracies. Moreover, those people aren't concentrated in particular social groups, but are spread pretty broadly throughout the population. As an example a Gallup survey from 1991, around the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, had the following question: "Some people have argued that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about Japanese plans to bomb Pearl Harbor but did nothing about it because he wanted an excuse to involve the U. S. on the side of the allies in the war. From what you know or have read, do you agree or disagree with this point of view?" About 31% agreed, 47% disagreed, and 22% didn't know. Of course, it's hard to say how many really believed this---probably few had given it thought before they were asked, but more than half were willing to regard it as a possibility. There wasn't much relationship to standard demographic and political variables--the only factors that made a clear difference were race (blacks were more likely to agree) and gender (women more likely to say they didn't know). The survey also happened to have a number of questions about religion--for example, beliefs about evolution and views of the bible. Although it seems plausible that the psychological factors that affect religious belief would also affect belief in conspiracies, there was little or no relationship. That is, the belief that FDR knew about plans for the attack were pretty much constant among all kinds of people.
Douthat's column then got into speculations about why different kinds of conservatives might be willing to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Here, I think his explanations are unnecessarily complicated: the reason is simply that some conservative leaders are saying it's true, many others are saying or implying that it's at least a possibility, and very few are saying that it is false. By leaders, I mean partly media figures but mostly elected officials. This encourages people who have doubts to speak up and keep the controversy going. In contrast, after other elections party leaders overwhelmingly dismissed or ignored claims that the election was stolen, so although the idea got significant support in surveys, it wasn't a political force. For example, Douthat suggest that we "recall the voting-machine theory spun to explain John Kerry’s narrow defeat in 2004." I doubt that many people could recall it--I happened to look it up a couple of weeks ago for a class I was teaching, but had pretty much forgotten about it until then.
This leads to the question of why Republican politicians are reluctant to abandon Trump, even after he's lost. One possibility is that they really believe in him. I doubt that, although of course I don't have any inside knowledge. A second possibility is that they think "the base" really believes in him, and don't want to antagonize it. This seems more likely, but Trump ran behind Republicans generally, and I think many Republican politicians must have noticed that. A third possibility is that they think that Trump will follow the same path as Sarah Palin--fading away after he leaves office and he no longer gets as much media attention. From that point of view, playing along with him and hoping that the controversy will weaken Joe Biden is a reasonable (if cynical) strategy.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
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