VP JD Vance blames Iran war for Republicans’ crushing defeat in US midterms

US Vice-President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed the Iran war and Washington’s relationship with Israel for the Republican Party’s drubbing in the midterm elections and said many voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024 switched sides in protest against the administration’s policies.

Vance wrote a lengthy post on X after Democrats swept both chambers of Congress in a historic midterm victory and said the Republicans did not suffer because their supporters stayed away from polling stations but because a significant number of people who voted for the Trump-Vance ticket in the 2024 presidential election turned against the party in the November 3 midterms.

Pointing to the results of internal polling, Vance identified four major reasons behind the voter backlash: the Iran war, rising living costs, concerns over the administration’s commitment to its ‘America First’ agenda and dissatisfaction with Washington’s relationship with Israel.

Vance wrote, “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” in one of the clearest acknowledgements from within the Trump administration that the Iran conflict became a political liability for Republicans.

Voters turned against us: VP

Vance said Republican data analysts had spent considerable time studying the composition of the electorate to determine whether the voters turning out resembled those who supported Trump in 2024.

Internal assessments suggested that Republican supporters were turning out in sufficient numbers, but Vance said that one data analyst he consulted warned him that strong turnout did not necessarily translate into votes for Republican candidates.

Vance recalled the analyst telling him, “We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us.”

“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” he said.

War turned out to be the biggest liability: Vance

Vance further said that one pollster had predicted that Republicans would lose the generic ballot by 13 percentage points. The generic ballot measures voters’ preferences for which party they want to control Congress.

The pollster specifically questioned voters who supported Trump in 2024 but were planning to vote Democratic in the midterms, and they listed four issues that could persuade them to return to the Republican camp.

The first was an end to the war. The second was greater focus on the cost of living and inflation. The third was a renewed commitment to the ‘America First’ agenda, and the last was a change in Washington’s relationship with Israel.