Vance made the comments in a long post on X, where he said he spoke with a pollster whom he described as "one of the smartest people I know in politics." He said that the pollster told him that "a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats" and asked those "who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team."

The top four responses were:

End the war
Focus on cost of living/inflation
Put America First
Change the US relationship with Israel

"The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night," Vance said. "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."

While President Trump also acknowledged that the war was related to the Republican loss, he still defended his decision to launch it. "Iran was a piece of it," Trump told The Wall Street Journal. "I don't think about it. I did the right thing. I would have done it again."

Throughout the war, leaks from the administration have presented Vance as the leading skeptic of the conflict, though he played a leading role in pushing war propaganda in the days leading up to the US-Israeli bombing campaign.

"The principle is very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon," Vance said on February 25, three days before the US and Israel launched the war with a sneak attack that involved killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family and the bombing of an elementary school that killed at least 120 children.

"If they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that causes problems for us. In fact, we've seen evidence that they have tried to do exactly that," Vance said at the time.