JD Vance Blames the Iran War for GOP Midterm Losses; Trump Says He Would Do It Again

Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday, Nov. 4, that the U.S. war with Iran was the main reason Republicans suffered heavy losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate.

“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote in a lengthy post on X, according to NBC News.

President Donald Trump later called Vance’s assessment “largely true” but said he would not change his decision to go to war, ABC News reported.

What JD Vance said on X

Vance framed the war as the issue his party has to face honestly before it can recover.

“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. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest,” he wrote. “But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

Vance said an unnamed pollster, whom he called “one of the smartest people I know in politics,” told him that voters named four issues Republicans would need to address to win them back, NBC News reported:

1. Ending the Iran war
2. Focusing on the cost of living and inflation
3. Putting America first
4. Changing 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. “This is according to a pollster who nailed the results.”

He argued that turnout was not the problem. “The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” he wrote, adding that “in no state was it catastrophic,” ABC News reported. He also said the pollster told him the party’s “economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch.”

Is Vance breaking with the Iran war?

Some coverage described the post as Vance distancing himself from the conflict. ABC News noted that the vice president had in the past publicly supported the war and criticized the president’s critics over it. The U.S. attack on Iran began with strikes carried out with Israel in late February, according to NBC News, and the war has pushed up oil prices at a time when costs were already high.

Vance is widely seen as a potential Republican presidential contender in 2028, NBC News noted, which is part of why his comments drew so much attention the morning after the election.

How Trump responded

Asked about Vance’s post at a White House event on Wednesday, Trump said it was “largely true” but defended the war.

“If I had it to do again, I’d have to do it again because long term, it’s the only answer,” Trump told reporters, according to ABC News. “You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump also said he had known Vance’s view of the war from the beginning. “I know how he feels about it. I think it was – I think it was fine. Yeah, I thought it was good,” he said of the post. Asked whether the war had been worth it, Trump said, “I do. Yeah. I mean, well, you have no choice.”

The night before, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that “Iran was a piece of it,” NBC News reported. On Truth Social, he suggested the bigger factor was that he was not on the ballot: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

What voters said

Exit polling offers a more mixed picture than Vance’s post. The ABC News Voter Poll found that 34% of U.S. House voters nationally called the Iran war “crucial” to their vote, while 49% said the same of the cost of living and 55% of government corruption.

The same poll found that about 4 in 10 House voters said they were angry about the way things are going in the country, and 59% said they were “very concerned” about the cost of health care. NBC News’ exit polling also showed deep dissatisfaction with Trump’s policies.

What comes next

Democrats will take control of Congress in January. How the White House handles the Iran war from here, and whether other Republicans echo Vance’s argument, will be closely watched as the party regroups ahead of 2028.

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