JD Vance Issues Shocking Post-Mortem of GOP Wipeout. Is He Right?

In one of the more astonishing admissions from any vice president in recent memory, Vice President JD Vance published a lengthy X post on Wednesday offering his explanation for Republicans’ sweeping defeats in the midterm elections. His analysis? The war, plain and simple.

Here’s his post in its entirety. It’s worth the read:

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition" – whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "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."

Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.

There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war

2) Focus on cost of living/inflation

3) Put America First

4) Change our relationship to Israel

Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)

In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.

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. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

It’s no secret that Vice President Vance was opposed to the kinetic strikes in Iran from the very beginning. Vance, who served in the Marine Corps, has been a staunch opponent of foreign interventionism since his emergence on the political scene.

Exit polling on Tuesday showed that many Americans, even many conservatives, shared Vance’s sentiment. Surveys leading up to the election also suggested that voters were frustrated with high fuel costs that are also driving up the cost of groceries and consumer goods. While the White House has a rationale for the war, it seems that a majority of Americans are simply not buying it. As of early October, 65 percent of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the Iran conflict.

It’s difficult to view Vance’s post as anything other than an astonishing rebuke of the war and the president who started it. Vance was effectively saying that the war was a mistake, in a sort of “I told you so moment” that you rarely see from a sitting vice president.

But Trump himself didn’t seem to take much offense to Vance’s commentary on Wednesday. Taking questions from reporters, Trump called Vance’s analysis “largely true,” but said that he would “do it [the war] again” because “long-term, it’s the only answer. You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

For Vance, the stakes may be political as much as ideological. The vice president is viewed as the heir-apparent to the “America First” movement and is still the betting favorite to be the Republican nominee for president in 2028. But winning the nomination is only half the battle – the more difficult challenge is actually winning the White House. If Vance is tied to an unpopular war, it could act as an electoral anchor in two years – even if he advised the president against getting involved in it in the first place.

Of course, history could still vindicate Trump and his decision to launch strikes against Iran. The regime could fall, gas prices could fall, and Trump could leave office with the enormous legacy of having brought the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to its knees.

What do you think? Is Vice President Vance correct? Or is there another reason that Republicans lost the midterms? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.