Business2 min
JD Vance blames Iran war for Republican midterm losses, says Trump voters defected
The vice president says the party's problem was not turnout but former Trump backers who switched to Democrats, and he named four issues that drove them.
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US Vice President JD Vance has pinned the Republican Party's midterm defeat on the war with Iran. In a long post on X on Wednesday, he said voters who backed the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024 moved to Democrats this time.
Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the November 3 elections. That leaves President Donald Trump facing a hard final two years in office.
"The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night," Vance wrote. He argued the conflict became a central factor in the setback.
He rejected the idea that Republicans simply failed to turn out their base. Vance said campaign data teams had checked whether the electorate looked like the 2024 one. Republican turnout, he said, was strong in several states, but it did not become wins.
Citing a pollster, Vance listed four reasons defectors gave: ending the war, tackling the cost of living and inflation, putting the America First agenda first, and changing the US relationship with Israel. He said those four covered nearly all the responses. He also conceded that the party's economic message may have fallen short late in the campaign.
On immigration, Vance pushed back on calls to embrace amnesty to win voters back. He said he was open to shifting enforcement priorities, including tougher action on businesses that hire undocumented workers. But he wrote, "Anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you." Republicans, he said, should address the concerns of those who left rather than rewrite immigration policy.
Why it matters: the vice president's diagnosis shapes how the party will respond. If the loss was about defections over war and prices, not turnout, Republicans face a tougher task in winning back their own former supporters. Read the original report at BW Businessworld.
FiledUnited StatesDonald TrumpInflationElectionsCongressIsrael
