It’s not just a protest vote: Why fed-up Georgia voters are looking beyond Biden and Trump ahead of the debate

A new focus group of Georgia voters who are seriously considering a third-party candidate this fall reveals how some of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump's onetime supporters in the key battleground are slipping away — and what, if anything, they can do to win them back.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was the clear favorite among the participants in an NBC News Deciders Focus Group, produced in collaboration with Engagious, Syracuse University and Sago. While all 10 voters voted for either Biden or Trump in 2020, not one said they currently plan to do so again: Seven currently back Kennedy, two back independent professor and activist Cornel West and one backs Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver.

For many, their decision isn’t just a protest vote, but one that's emblematic of deep disdain for both major-party nominees, an exhaustion with the country’s political system and a desire for something different.

“I can’t in good conscience vote for either one of them. ... I’ve seen each of them as president and I don’t want to see either of them in the next four years,” said Sherri D., a 50-year-old from Roswell who backed Trump in 2020.

“So many people are voting against the other one, they’re voting for the lesser of two evils and I just don’t want to be that person," she added later. "I want to actually research and learn and I want to vote for the person, in my conscience, I truly want to win, even if they don’t have a chance or even if people think that they don’t have a chance.”

In 2020, Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992. Among the six voters in the focus group who backed Biden four years ago, four said they’re planning to vote for