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 massive 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 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 said they were concerned 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.Unlike a poll, which uses statistical methods to demonstrate how a larger population feels, focus groups dig into deeper detail about how a handful of people feel about key questions.
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...