Republicans Fear Iran Will Cost Them The Midterms, Ceasefire Or Not

Republicans are relieved over Trump’s steps toward reconciliation in Iran — but they worry the measures are too little, too late to save them from a brutal midterm election cycle.

Behind the public celebration by many Republicans of the temporary two-week ceasefire announcement, longtime party operatives continue to warn of a bleak political reality as the cost-of-living concerns around the war including spiking gas prices that are likely to continue for weeks if not longer even if the fragile ceasefire holds.

A person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, put it bluntly.

“This war in Iran almost cements the fact that we lose the midterms in November — the Senate and House,” the person said.

The concerns are compounded by Republicans’ underperformances in a spate of recent elections, fueling fears that voters, concerned about pocketbook issues, are eager for change. The war, even if it ends now, will likely have lingering effects on gas and other commodity prices that Republicans will be forced to defend on the trail, as much as they might try to talk about tax cuts or border security.

“We will not turn on the proverbial dime to right this course,” said Barrett Marson, a longtime GOP strategist in Arizona. “Time is not on the president’s side when it comes to the November election.”

Trump and his top advisers have spent much of the last few months arguing that the country was on the verge of an economic turnaround — one that would become evident as policies from the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill started to fully take effect.

Instead, the Iran war has put the president and his allies on the defensive, overshadowing their economic messaging while worsening many voters’ actual economic realities. Iran has used the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of global oil flows, as leverage over the U.S. in the war, sending gas prices spiking across the country.

White House aides pointed to declines in oil and natural gas prices and rebounds in the stock market following Trump’s ceasefire announcement as proof that the president’s promises are coming true. They also argue that the benefits of his economic policies — including tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill — have yet to be fully felt by voters.

“As energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.

Republicans’ more dismal outlook also comes as the party has continued to underperform Trump by wide margins in all manner of elections.

On Tuesday, that trend accelerated. Georgia Democrat Shawn Harris lost a special election for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old House seat by 12 points, but he slashed into Trump’s massive 37 point win in the district in 2024. And in Wisconsin, the Democratic-aligned state Supreme Court nominee won in a blowout, and did so by carrying GOP strongholds in the state.

Democrats have continued to hammer Trump for the war, and they’ve seized on the high gas prices it’s caused to elevate what was already their core campaign focus: affordability. Polling from the Democratic firm Navigator Research released Wednesday found that 65 percent of voters do not agree with how Trump is handling gas prices, which have jumped to over $4 per gallon on average; while 71 percent believed the war in Iran led to the increased prices.

Republicans acknowledge that Democrats’ affordability argument is landing. One Georgia Republican strategist pointed to the fact that the war — which has also split the MAGA base over foreign intervention broadly — “is also an affordability issue.”

“Trump’s going to own that,” said the strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“I don’t think any Georgia Republican who understands the Georgia general electorate would want Trump coming here,” they said. “Particularly if [Trump’s favorability is] in the high 30s or mid 30s, if he’s in the mid 30s it’d be a fucking blood bath. Holy fuck."

Trump’s current job approval rating is 39 percent, according to a New York Times aggregate.

Still, some GOP strategists are optimistic that the president has time to turn the economy — and their election prospects — around. After Trump’s Tuesday night announcement, U.S. oil fell to about $94 dollars a barrel, down from a high of nearly $113, but still far higher than pre-war levels.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump would travel to Arizona and Nevada to tout his economic policies.

“You'll hear a lot from the president about how his policies have benefited the American people,” Leavitt said while announcing the trips.

One Republican running in a swing state agreed that there’s plenty of time before November.

Mike Rogers, a Republican who is running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, told POLITICO in an interview Wednesday “there's lots of opportunity here to try to get this record set straight,” when asked about affordability.

“Anytime you're a nation at war, you're concerned,” Rogers said, “But I think they feel that the president is going in the right direction and accomplishing what he needed to accomplish by taking a terrorist state off of the board from being able to threaten everybody.”

As for Tuesday’s results, Rogers didn’t see a connection to his state.

“Wisconsin is Wisconsin. Michigan is Michigan,” he said.

Another Georgia Republican operative said the midterms were always going to be tough even before Iran. The special election results have “only confirmed what Republicans already know, and that is we're going to have to fight more than we've ever fought before.”

“I do think my Democratic friends and colleagues are probably reading too much into this,” they said. Plus, they added, “We lost special elections before we invaded Iran, right? So it's just really hard to tell.”

Adam Wren and Alec Hernandez contributed to this report.