It’s impossible to deny the connection between last week’s electoral disaster and voters’ disapproval of the Iran war.
In the endless to and fro about causes of electoral disaster in which the polling experts agree that the war made a normal defeat into a disaster, and partisans say it was their most important issue, I’ve heard it said that “no one is denying that the war was a factor.” And yet, here are Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, trying mightily to downplay it: “It Was the Economy, Not the War.” Their piece contends that the people want more war!
Penn and Stein start by quoting Vance — “The reason we lost is the war” — and then try to argue against this. They say wars cause “major political shifts” only when they produce thousands of casualties. But this war produced “a temporary $1.50-a-gallon increase in the price of gasoline, which costs a typical household about $20 a week.” In their view, “if that’s enough to bring about a political sea change, then the electorate has lost all rationality.”
That’s an argument that the war should not have influenced voters — but pollsters left, right, and working for the president say it did. The vice president says it did. And Donald Trump said it did last night in his 60 Minutes interview. I would note that the latter two are paying professionals, not bloviators, for their opinion. I’m no stranger to arguing with expert opinion, but it seems to me that the populist assertions against expertise are coming from an unusual camp now.
While politically motivated argument is normal, denial and delusion can be deadly. This passage in the Journal passes into that territory:
True, when the Fox News Voter Poll asked if going to war with Iran was the right or wrong decision, roughly 6 in 10 voters said it was the wrong decision. But the Harvard CAPS/Harris polls asked follow-up questions that suggest voters don’t want to abandon the war—they want to finish it the right way. Asked if the Iranians were negotiating in good faith, 65% of respondents said no. Should the Iranians be allowed to control the Strait of Hormuz? Sixty-seven percent said no, including a majority of both parties.
The poll also asked if Iran should be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon, and 85% said no. People agree with the objectives of the conflict, and those objectives may not be achievable without conflict. Asked whether the U.S. is justified in using force if the Iranians refuse to yield on these key issues, 63% said yes. The war has dragged on when voters wanted it to be won—and they still do.
The questions don’t even cut the way the op-ed suggests. Iranians did not “control” the strait in an adverse way before the war started again in February and March. But the last sentence flies in the face of the evidence. And we have plenty of it.
Agreeing that Iran should not have the bomb is not the same thing as wanting to fight a war over it. When pollsters weigh the war against goals and costs, the answer is not ambiguous. A month into the war — before anyone could claim that negative answers are really about the vice president’s memorandum of understanding — Reuters/Ipsos found that 66 percent of Americans wanted the U.S. to end the war quickly “even if not all its goals were achieved.” Only 27 percent said that they wanted to keep going until the goals were met. In July, University of Maryland/Ipsos found that 52 percent wanted the war ended right now, with no further military action unless the U.S. was attacked. Just 24 percent wanted to keep using force while the objectives were unachieved. Independents agreed 65 to 17 percent. YouGov did a survey just before the election and found that 53 percent wanted the government to prioritize lower prices even if military goals were unmet. Only 22 percent were on the other side.
The president’s approval on the economy was falling from the moment he was inaugurated, but it fell faster and more sharply once the war started. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Penn and Stein argue that “increased wages” were among the arguments the GOP “should have been able to win.”
Why couldn’t they win it?
All through 2025, the year of the tariffs, real hourly earnings grew faster than prices, by 1 to nearly 2 percent a year. In February 2026, they were still up 1.2 percent. Then the war came. In April, real wages were falling. The cause isn’t a mystery. By September, energy prices were up 16 percent from a year earlier. Gasoline up 27 percent. The war took back and reversed the Trump-era pay raises.
Doesn’t seem to me that voters turning against the war is all that irrational anymore.