Disappointed primary voters weigh their choices: From the Politics Desk

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

In today’s edition, Ben Kamisar and Bridget Bowman have the key takeaways from our latest voter focus groups in Michigan and Texas. Plus, Kristen Welker dives into the downballot effects of this cycle’s key gubernatorial races.

Focus groups: Their candidates lost in the Michigan and Texas primaries. Now what?

By Ben Kamisar and Bridget Bowman

Some voters who backed losing candidates in two key Senate primaries this year are still wrestling with whether to support their party’s nominee on Election Day, with major implications for who controls the Senate majority next year.

Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Texas Republican Ken Paxton are both trying to stitch their parties back together for their battleground races after divisive primaries. Two focus groups — one with Michiganders who supported Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens ’ unsuccessful Senate bid, and another with Texans who backed Republican Sen. John Cornyn in that primary — reveal how some rank-and-file voters are struggling to process personal concerns about the nominees alongside a desire to be loyal to their party.

The focus groups, produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago and observed by NBC News, showed Cornyn voters who see Paxton as corrupt but are hesitant to hand Democrats a Senate seat. In Michigan, the Stevens voters worried about whether El-Sayed is too extreme — and some voiced concerns about his Muslim faith and his allegiances.

Both narratives echo how their general election opponents — former Rep. Mike Rogers , the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, and state Rep. James Talarico , the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas — have sought to define them.

“I’m split down the middle. In this instance, I really feel that I am looking at the lesser of two evils and I’m not sure which that is,” said Kathleen S., a 62-year-old Republican from Comal County in Texas.

In these two 90-minute conversations, the Cornyn voters were more open to looking past ethical concerns about Paxton, the Texas attorney general.

The Stevens voters, meanwhile, included more political independents, and they were more hesitant to back El-Sayed, a former public health official in Michigan.

“In Michigan, I heard undecided Stevens voters growing nervous with El-Sayed, and in Texas I heard Cornyn voters abandoning their preferred candidate, Talarico, in order to put loyalty to the GOP first,” said Rich Thau , the president of Engagious, who moderated the groups. “These undecided voters truly contorted themselves as they struggled to justify a choice they feared they’d later regret.”

Ramaswamy ad underscores how governor’s races could affect downballot contests

Analysis by Kristen Welker

The impact of Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy ’s controversial ad against Democratic opponent Amy Acton could be felt well beyond the governor’s race.

The ad features Acton’s estranged mother accusing her of lying. Acton has said that she has not spoken to her mother in decades and that she was sexually abused by her mother’s husband when she was a child.

But while Ramaswamy and some of his allies defend the spot, the flood of other Republicans condemning it — including Sen. Jon Husted , who is on the November ballot as well — emphasizes how the controversy could have a ripple effect downballot. One GOP strategist told me there are concerns within the party that the ad could turn off critical women voters in Husted’s race and multiple competitive House districts in the state.

Ohio isn’t the only state where the top-of-the-ticket contests could shift the dynamics in races farther down the ballot.

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