Republicans Sink in the US Elections, and Vance Openly Blames the War With Iran

The Democrats have taken both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections of Donald Trump's term. Not by a narrow margin - in a landslide. According to current results, the Democrats have 247 House seats against 153 for the Republicans, with 35 races still undecided, and 218 are needed for a House majority. In the Senate they've secured at least 54 seats.

The numbers that hurt most come from states the Republicans considered their own. Iowa and Kansas flipped to the Democrats. Texas elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in more than three decades - James Talarico beat Ken Paxton, the Trump-backed candidate. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom leads incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by just over 1,000 votes, with ballots still being counted. Over 122 million Americans voted, almost half the electorate, according to estimates by the University of Florida's Election Lab.

"The reason is the war"

The real earthquake came the next day, and not from the opposition. Vice President JD Vance posted a 600-word piece on X and wrote what Washington had only whispered until now: "The reason for our defeat is the war." And he added: "The president himself said so last night."

Vance cited a pollster who asked 2024 Trump voters who had now voted Democrat what would bring them back. The four most common answers: an end to the war, a focus on the cost of living and inflation, "America First", and a change in the relationship with Israel. Then he threw down the gauntlet: "If you want to argue it was worth it, that it was worth losing the Senate for the next six years, then argue that. Agree or disagree, at least that's honest."

The US and Israel attacked Tehran in February. Vance publicly supported the war, but it was an open secret in Washington that in private conversations with administration figures he opposed it. Now he's put it on the table - without mentioning Trump by name even once, and attributing the conclusions to unnamed pollsters.

Then came the second surprise. Trump, who usually demands unconditional loyalty from his people, agreed that the war largely decided the elections - but said that in the same situation he "would do the same again". "I know what he thinks about that. I think that's fine," he said of Vance's post. "I knew what I was doing when I went into it; we stopped them from getting a nuclear weapon and they'll never have one."

How often in the Balkans has a government's number two publicly written that the party lost because of the number one's decision - and still been in office the next day? In Washington this may be the first shot in the race for 2028. Vance is already offering a four-point plan to win voters back, which sounds like the core of future campaign speeches, though there's no official decision on a run yet.

The revolt is in their own ranks

Vance isn't alone. Ohio Republican Congressman Warren Davidson said voters, especially young ones, felt "betrayed" over two things: the war and the high cost of living, and he also blamed the Trump administration's tariffs for rising prices. "The voters' message in 2024 was clear: we don't want these wars," he said. Texas Senator John Cornyn, who lost his primary to none other than Paxton, wrote in an op-ed that the defeat "wasn't just predictable, it was predicted", and criticised Trump for sideshows - like the presentation of a pool project outside the White House.

Even the winners aren't getting carried away. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer admitted: "Millions of Americans voted for us out of frustration with Trump, not because they love the Democratic Party." Analysts expect Trump to rely on executive orders from now on to get around Congress, while Schumer accepts that the president can block legislation with his veto.

Two years remain until the presidential election. Trump no longer has a majority in Congress, his vice president is already writing his own programme, and American voters have shown something every government would like to forget: a war far from home still comes home - at the ballot box.