WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that the war with Iran is the reason Republicans lost the midterm elections, writing in a post on X that many voters who backed the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024 voted for Democrats this time.
Vance put it in one line:
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.”
Turnout was not the problem
The problem was not turnout, Vance wrote. Republican voters showed up. In Florida, he said, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, only a couple of points worse than in 2024.
“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” he wrote.
Four reasons voters gave
Vance said a pollster he respects, who told him the day before the election that Republicans would lose the generic ballot by 13 points, had asked voters who left the party what would bring them back. The top four answers, he wrote, were to end the war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first, and change the U.S. relationship with Israel.
“Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats,” Vance wrote. He added that Rachel Campos Duffy’s call for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, attacked by many on Monday, turned out to be sound political advice.
Vance warned against blaming the loss on anything else. “In the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of gaslighting,” he wrote, saying establishment politicians would claim amnesty is the answer. “But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.”
“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” he wrote. “But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
President Donald Trump gave a narrower account on Tuesday night. He told The Wall Street Journal that Iran “was a piece of it,” but that he “did the right thing” and “would have done it again.”
Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections, ending two years of unified Republican control of Washington.
Vance ended on a hopeful note. “I remain hopeful about our country,” he wrote. “Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.”
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