Quick Takes On The Midterms

@LeaderJohnThune Hello Senator Thune... https://t.co/lPMAETqwcn

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) November 4, 2026

There are several countertrend results from last night:

• Republicans won both the Senate seat and the governor's race in Florida
• Ditto for Arkansas
• Republican Kelly Ayotte won reelection as New Hampshire governor.

The immediate takeaway is that DeSantis's presidential prospects aren't dead, while if Vance proposes to be more of Trump, that may not be a winning formula.

The conventional wisdom is that the Iran war was responsible for the Republican defeat.

President Donald Trump says the Iran war will end “soon,” a promise he’s been making most of this year.

Eventually he will be right, but it hasn’t happened in time for the midterm elections — and his party is bearing the brunt.

If Republicans get thumped Tuesday, all the polling suggests that prices will be one of the main reasons, with the Iran war’s contribution to higher costs looming large.

I'm not sure about this. As a public policy matter, Islam looks to become a major problem for the West. Sooner or later, it will be necessary to re-confront it, as European powers did from the Crusades to the Siege of Vienna. Iran is one of its worst modern manifestations. Trump is visionary enough to recognize this, although I'm not sure if he pursued the Iran war in the best way -- I think he underestimated the willingness of the hardliners to go against their own interests to stay in absolute power, and the result has been the same counterproductive pauses we saw in Viet Nam.

But isn't Islam the subtext of the dispute between Bp Robert Barron and Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco? Vesco's seat is in Algeria, a largely Muslim country, and his position is that the Church in Algeria should not seek conversions, but rather become part of Algerian society through coexistence and fraternity.

But the problem is that Muslims simply don't believe in coexistence and fraternity. Cdl Vesco is seeking to temporize with people who don't temporize. Bp Barron has already taken this issue on:

Bishop Robert Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (MN) and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, today [April 14] announced the release of his latest book, What Do Their Deaths Demand?: Christian Persecution Today.

. . . “The global persecution of Christians is not a matter of distant statistics, but an unconscionable violation of human rights that transcends political divisions,” said Bishop Barron. “This is not a partisan or peripheral concern. It is a defining measure of any just society. Every person possesses an inviolable dignity, and with it the right to seek the truth and to worship God according to conscience.”

Reflecting this call for unity, the book has received formal endorsements from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Bishop Barron, who serves on the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, offers the work as a resource to help awaken the public conscience and encourage solidarity with those who suffer for their faith.

Re-confronting Islam is simply a major agenda item for the West. Trump is one of the few people in leadership positions who recognize this clearly, even if his ideas on how to do this are inchoate -- as, I suppose, are Bp Barron's as well. It's also worth considering that re-confonting Islam will likely be a task for some generations to come, and neither Trump nor even Bp Barron will be the ons to lead it. So it's worth focusing on other explanations for last night's performance:

There are a lot of things to say about how poorly the Republicans did last night, and no doubt every single one of them — perspicacious or not — will be said in every way possible and far too many times for comfort.

But I want to keep my focus on one big point: Donald Trump's political instincts, at least when it comes to choosing candidates to run for office, are absolutely atrocious. He seems to have an almost uncanny ability to choose the wrong person to back.

This election cycle, Trump's biggest whiff was Darlene Graham, who managed to lose a Senate seat in South Carolina, which you have to admit takes an unbelievable amount of negative charisma. Or maybe you think Ken Paxton was the worst choice, and you could be right about that one too.

On the other hand, Trump had little choice but to endorse Darlene Graham after her brother's sudden demise, but Lindsey was an old-fashioned Republican who'd reluctantly aligned himself with Trump. Susan Collins was a similar case; neither is the future of the party, but Trump would naver have been able to force them out and find more attractive replacements for them no matter his instincts.

I think the most productive result of the midterms will be to rethink candidates and strategy for 2028. I suspect Rubio's and DeSantis's prospects are up, while Vance's are down; it will be a bad idea to run on a platform simply of more Trump.

UPDATE: Analysis from Vance:

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. 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. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2026