Republicans lose both chambers of Congress and strongholds such as Texas and Kansas. Vance identifies the Iran war as a central cause of a defeat that also serves as a warning to Europe’s right.
By Javier Villamor
The Republican Party has suffered a humiliating defeat of enormous proportions in the midterm elections, two years after returning to the White House with a promise to put American interests ahead of foreign wars.
Democrats have regained control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, flipping at least seven Republican Senate seats and more than twenty House districts. They have also won governorships and state legislatures.
The electoral map reveals a blue tsunami sweeping across much of the country, a defeat that will be difficult for Republicans to digest.
Democrats have captured Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maine. Kansas had not elected a Democratic senator since 1932. In Texas, James Talarico secured victory, while his party also wrested the governorship from Republican Greg Abbott. Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Nevada have likewise flipped in their gubernatorial races.
According to Reuters, the GOP lost ground compared with 2024 in 99% of the roughly 2,200 counties analysed, with an average decline of eight percentage points. This is not simply a case of exceptional mobilisation on the left: a significant portion of the electorate that brought Trump to power has now abandoned him.
Vice President JD Vance openly identified on Wednesday the cause for this defeat that makes the White House most uncomfortable: the war against Iran, fought for Israel’s interests.
According to Vance, former Republican voters who switched to the Democrats identified four conditions for returning: ending the war, tackling inflation, restoring America First, and changing America’s relationship with Israel.
Trump, who promised to bring Washington’s endless wars to an end, has instead dragged the United States into another conflict in the Middle East, one closely tied to the strategic priorities of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.
The military campaign against Iran has entered its ninth month with no definitive end in sight. Pentagon figures reported by the Associated Press put its cost at $47.1 billion by mid-October. Rising oil prices have driven up fuel costs, while tariffs and inflation continue to squeeze household budgets.
A Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey found that 86% of Americans believed the war was damaging the cost of living. The Associated Press also found that roughly two-thirds of voters believed Trump’s policies had made the economy worse. Foreign policy and the domestic economy have ultimately become the same electoral problem.
Vance, who reportedly opposed the decision to launch the war in private, subsequently attempted to negotiate a diplomatic way out. That position brought him into conflict with the more interventionist wing of the Republican Party, particularly those committed to backing Israel at any cost.
The Washington Post documented criticism of Vance by Marc Thiessen, Ben Domenech, and Lindsey Graham in June over his diplomatic efforts. The pressure on the vice president therefore predates the electoral defeat and reflects a genuine division within the MAGA movement.
Those who challenged attempts to end the war will now have to explain the political cost of having defended it. Trump acknowledges that Iran contributed to the defeat, although he maintains that he would make the same decision again. His growing distance from Vance points to a struggle over the future of the Republican Party: whether to return to national priorities or continue subordinating them to foreign commitments.
America First was never limited to border control or immigration. It also promised to restore Washington’s freedom to make sovereign decisions, free from military interventions and the interests of the political establishment. The defeat exposes the price of abandoning that promise.
The warning extends to Europe. Some sections of the national-conservative right have turned their alignment with Israel into a political badge of honour, even when that position risks coming into conflict with their own national interests.
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