JD Vance, Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz all pointed to Iran war and affordability as key factors in Democratic victory
US midterms 2026 live – latest updates
Republican hopefuls in the race to succeed Donald Trump swiftly blamed two key pillars of his agenda – the Iran war and tariffs – for summoning the Democratic blue wave that swept the US midterm elections.
JD Vance, the outgoing Florida governor Ron DeSantis and the senator Ted Cruz all pointed to frustration over cost of living amid the fallout from Republican defeats across the country, including in previous strongholds.
They pointed to factors including Trump’s prolonged war on Iran and aggressive trade agenda; the US-Israel relationship; and Democratic ads that painted conservative candidates poorly.
“Tariffs have made everything too expensive and the Iran war has dragged on too long,” Cruz, a former Republican presidential candidate who has not ruled out another run, said on his podcast, Verdict With Ted Cruz, on Wednesday. “It should have been brief, decisive and over. It needs to end.”
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote in a lengthy X post, suggesting his party lost because voters are angry at the Trump administration for diverting focus away from Americans.
“To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be,” the vice-president added. “Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.”
DeSantis, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican nomination two years ago and has since endured a strained relationship with the president, declared this week’s elections to be “close to an extinction-level event” for their party.
Democrats made Republicans look bad with ads targeting them over the case of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and congressional stock trading, DeSantis said on Wednesday.
“We ran as Republicans on saying, ‘We need to do that,’” DeSantis said of the Epstein files, which included a vast array of documents and correspondences tied to the disgraced financier. “And then you actually have people in the Congress voting against release [of the Epstein files] when the attorney general said she had all this horrific stuff on her desk and that people were going to be held accountable.”
“It’s untenable when you have people going in, trading stock,” the Florida governor added.
In the months and weeks leading up to the US midterm elections, polling showed voters were increasingly disgruntled with Trump’s handling of his job. Americans were feeling the squeeze of the US economy with gas prices and grocery costs rising – a result of the ongoing war with Iran.
Democrats promised to make life more affordable and keep the US president’s sprawling agenda in check – and won over voters. Democrats have seized authority in both chambers of Congress and won a majority of the gubernatorial races around the country.
Even Trump admitted, on Wednesday, that his war with Iran had pushed potential Republican voters away. “It’s largely true because it drove gasoline up a little bit,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Cruz blamed Republican politicians for ignoring the warning signs. “Too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand, and they didn’t care,” he said. “Food is too high. Gas is too high. Diesel is too high. Insurance is too high. Life is too high.”
