Why did Republicans lose the midterms?

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November 5, 2026 / 4:04 PM EST / CBS News

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Washington — Widespread Republican losses in the midterm elections are roiling the GOP, prompting soul-searching over what went wrong and a brewing blame game that's expected to heat up as the party looks toward the next election.

From House and Senate races to governors' mansions, Republicans saw striking losses, both in battlegrounds and in places where the party saw significant support just two years ago. The victories dramatically shifted the balance of power in Washington, delivering Democrats a sizable majority in the House far beyond what was expected heading into Election Day, as well as a Senate majority larger than what the GOP has enjoyed for the last two years.  

As Republicans process the results, including some GOP officials who have ambitions of their own in 2028, they're offering frank assessments of the shortcomings — and laying the groundwork for where the party heads next.  

The war in Iran

Throughout the country, as Republicans tried to rally support around their accomplishments over the last two years, the president's war in Iran loomed large. And in this week's elections, its impact on the economy and prices appeared to overshadow most everything else. 

"The reason we lost is the war," Vice President JD Vance said in a candid post on social media that was among the first efforts from a top Republican to unpack the party's losses. 

"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," said Vance, who is widely seen as a possible presidential contender in 2028. "But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there."

Asked about the comments, President Trump told reporters that it's "largely true" that Republicans lost the House and Senate because war led to higher energy prices, agreeing with Vance. But he also argued that the war has been worthwhile.

"If I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again," Mr. Trump said.

Early in the war, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the vice president was "philosophically, a little bit different than me," and was "less enthusiastic about going" into Iran. Still, Vance has largely stood by Mr. Trump on Iran.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who called the midterms a "Watergate-level repudiation," also cited the war, saying, "the Iran war has dragged on too long." 

"It should have been brief, decisive, and over — it needs to end," said Cruz, who has vocally supported the war.

But Cruz pointed more broadly to the war's impact on prices, citing gas and diesel, along with the impacts of the president's trade policy, saying, "Tariffs have made everything too expensive."

Cost of living takes center stage

More so than the war in Iran, voters nationally said cost of living was a major factor in their vote, according to CBS News exit polls. 

Cruz said many GOP candidates this cycle seemed "like they didn't understand or they didn't care" about the cost of living. He said there's a "very real economic disconnect: Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide," referring to the idea that some Americans' fortunes are on the upswing while others are pointing downward.

The Texas Republican cited Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire, while at the same time, millions of Americans struggled to feed their families. And as data centers were constructed and the wealthiest people became even wealthier, he said Americans saw their electricity bills go up significantly in recent years. 

"Understandably, people were pissed off," he said. "And elected Republicans didn't do enough to address their very real pain."

Democrats hammered Republicans over the cost of living, as economic populism became a key tenet of the cycle, while some candidates, like James Talarico in Texas, billed the fight as top-versus-bottom, rather than left-versus-right. Texas Republicans suffered one of the most striking routs of the midterms: Starting next year, Cruz will be one of the only Republican statewide elected officials in a state that was once viewed as almost imperviously red.

GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, whose seat Talarico will take in the new year after Cornyn lost his primary to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, lamented that after voters trusted Mr. Trump and the GOP to "protect their pocketbooks" in the 2024 elections, the president "misread his mandate." 

"Voters wanted to retool our trading relationships, but got arbitrary 'Liberation Day' tariffs that raised prices without creating incentives for long-term reshoring," Cornyn wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. "Voters wanted secure borders and peaceful streets, but got hyperaggressive immigration enforcement. The Iran conflict came with no attempt to persuade the public. And Mr. Trump signaled disconnection by focusing on sideshows like swimming-pool liners in the Reflecting Pool."

Cornyn added, "Americans elected the Donald Trump who put on the apron of the Golden Arches and got a plan for a Triumphal Arch instead."

Cornyn, who was formerly the No. 2 Senate Republican, also pointed to how corruption surged to a top issue for voters, "thanks to flawed midterm candidates and a parade of unsavory headlines out of Washington."

Democrats like Talarico worked hard to tie corruption to cost-of-living concerns expressed widely. And roughly nine in 10 voters nationally said government corruption was a major factor in their vote.

"Voters won't trust Republicans to cut fraud and scams out of government programs until we cut them out of our own ranks," Cornyn wrote. "Party leaders have to stop excusing the inexcusable and police our side of the aisle — or voters will continue to police it for us."

Focus on culture wars

Beyond the cost-of-living concerns, some Republicans also pointed to an over-emphasis on culture war issues. 

Outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who called the midterm outcomes as "close to an extension-level event for Republicans as we have seen probably in the last hundred years," said he knew Republicans were in trouble when he saw they were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads centering transgender issues. 

"That was not the issue motivating voters, and it was kind of like an attempt to just scare Republicans to vote," DeSantis said at a news conference.

By late October, more than $180 million had been spent on ads that centered transgender-related attacks against Democrats, according to the Associated Press, reminiscent of the "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" ads that blanketed the airwaves in the 2024 presidential election. 

DeSantis — who has staked out conservative positions on transgender issues — argued the issue is no longer as potent, saying: "Four years ago, we were in the peak-woke era." But now, he argued, "the issues are different."

"Republicans, it seemed like — in some of the ads I was seeing, with how much money they were spending — they really were fighting yesterday's battles," he said.

As Republicans turned their attention to transgender and other culture-war issues, Democrats didn't give the attacks traction, shifting the focus at nearly every turn to affordability concerns. Some moderate Democrats in battleground states also voiced opposition to transgender participation in girls' sports, which may have neutralized some attacks.

But DeSantis also argued the election wasn't the result of voters having positive views of Democrats — exit polling shows voters had unfavorable opinions of both parties, though Republicans' favorability (40%) was lower than Democrats' (47%).

Instead, DeSantis said, it was a "rejection of Republicans in Washington." And that rebuke wasn't only aimed at the president, he argued, but also the GOP-controlled Congress, as voters became "frustrated with the lack of productivity from Republicans in the House and Senate."

"So it's really both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue," DeSantis said. "It's not just one."

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