Vice President JD Vance seems to be positioning himself for a major 2028 presidential win by bashing President Donald Trump‘s decision to strike Iran and smearing Israel after the midterm election. But Fox News election polling data shows that, actually, most Republicans think support for Israel isn’t strong enough, and only a minority of Republicans said the Iran operation was crucial in their voting decision for Congress.
Broadcaster Erick Erickson posted an interesting comment worth reading when assessing the subject:
Two Senators tell me the Vice President is right that the GOP turned against the Iran war in the Senate GOP’s own polling. But they say what the VP leaves out is that the turn came after the VP negotiated a bad deal with the Iranian regime that repulsed the GOP.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) November 4, 2026
It is true that there was never a time when a majority of voters of all affiliations were in favor of the Iran operation. A Politico poll in March, however, showed that 43% of voters approved of the strikes while only 33% disapproved; that 61% of Republicans overall approved of the strikes; and over 80% of those who identified as MAGA supported them.
In short, the Republican base was behind Trump on the strikes, and more voters overall supported the strikes than strongly disapproved of them. It was Vance's weak deal, negotiated with Pakistan, that would’ve rewarded the Iranian regime and yet still didn’t incentivize the Ayatollahs to end the war, that really started messing things up. Vance and others convinced Trump to drag out negotiations and put off the decisive strike, and that was the issue, not that we hit Iran at the beginning of this year. Trump had the right instincts at the start when he wanted to have a quick and very decisive operation.
Vance came out after the extremely discouraging midterm election results for Republicans and talked as if striking Iran in the first place and having a friendly relationship with Israel were the primary reasons that Republicans lost. He was dealing Trump a slap in the face and positioning himself for a presidential run at the same time. But Vance is wildly wrong if he thinks that he will sail to victory in 2028 among Republicans by making hate of Israel and total rejection of bombing terrorists the themes of his campaign. (This is why I would prefer Marco Rubio for president.)
Recommended: Erika Kirk’s Post-Election Reflection on Charlie’s Vision
So we turn to the Fox News polling of individuals casting ballots between October 19 and November 3. Because the polling happened over a couple of weeks, the outlet did occasionally ask the same question twice, but results were relatively consistent.
Only 19% of polled GOP voters said they thought that American support for Israel was too strong, while 59% said that they thought actually our support for Israel was not strong enough. The only overwhelmingly anti-Israel responses were from Democrats, 79% of whom asserted that U.S. support for Israel is too strong. In other words, Vance’s Tucker Carlson-like obsession with Israel is likely to appeal primarily to Democrats, but certainly not the majority of Republicans. And as I saw a Jewish commentator stating, Vance will never be able to outperform the Democrats on hatred of Israel, or attract Democrat voters to the Republican Party simply by being antisemitic.
Then, Fox did three rounds of questioning about the Iran operation’s influence on voting. In the samples, 26%, 34%, and 41% respectively said that the Iran operation was “crucial” or a “major factor” in their vote for Congress. Each time, a distinct majority of GOP voters said the Iran operation wasn’t impacting their vote. More Republicans (33%-65%) said AI data centers were an influencing factor, and 46% put the economy as a top reason, while almost 90% put immigration policy as a top reason.
I don’t think Vance is really interested in why Republicans lost the midterms. He had his interpretation pre-packaged and ready to apply to the data. He was bent on blaming Israel and griping about Iran strikes he never supported. He engaged in no self-reflection or deep analysis. This is not the candidate Republicans need in 2028.
