Meet the voters who might ditch Biden and Trump for RFK Jr.: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, national political reporter Ben Kamisar breaks down our latest focus group of a key bloc of Georgia voters. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd explores who has more to lose at Thursday's debate.

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Why fed-up Georgia voters are looking beyond Biden and Trump

By Ben Kamisar

It’s not just a protest vote.

That’s one thing a group of Georgia voters considering third-party presidential candidates wanted to make clear during an NBC News Deciders Focus Group this week, produced in collaboration with Engagious, Syracuse University and Sago.

Seven out of the 10 voters in the battleground state who participated, all of whom voted for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden in 2020, are currently planning to back independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while two support professor Cornel West and one backs Libertarian Chase Oliver.

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But as Margaret Talev, one of our partners in this project, told me: While we’ve heard from RFK Jr.-curious voters before, this group went further.

“We’ve been asking our focus group participants about RFK each month, and most until now have seen him as an alternative to Biden or Trump or know the Kennedy name, but admit they don’t know much about his record or platform. The Georgia voters seemed different,” Talev said. “They indicated they’re learning details about his positions from vaccines to foreign policy and having opportunities to listen to or see more of him.”

These