Vice President JD Vance and his allies are privately debating whether he should run for president in 2028 after Republicans suffered sweeping losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people close to him.
Some allies have told Vance they no longer believe any Republican can win the presidency in two years, and on Election Day, a longtime confidant texted him to consider sitting out the race, according to the report.
Vance has told associates he hasn’t made up his mind, six people close to him told WSJ.
Democrats flipped seven Republican Senate seats on Tuesday, including Vance’s former seat in Ohio, and won governorships in Georgia and Texas.
Within a day of the vote, a veteran New York fundraiser began hearing from major donors who said they could not back Vance and floated Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as an alternative, according to the report.
Vance calls for rethinking Israel relationship
In a lengthy essay posted on social media this week, Vance blamed the Iran war for the Republican losses and said the party needed to change its relationship with Israel. Republicans in Washington widely read the essay as a first step toward distancing himself from some of Trump’s unpopular policies, the Journal reported. Donald Trump Jr. publicly endorsed it.
People close to Vance told the newspaper the results were a rejection of the war rather than of Trump, and predicted the president’s coalition could be rebuilt once the conflict ends.
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
Vance’s private warnings on war with Iran
In January, as Trump weighed a major military operation, Vance privately urged him not to give up on diplomacy and began gathering polling on the risks of an all-out war, according to text messages viewed by WSJ.
The results showed the public split 44% to 43% on going to war, but 62% said fewer than 100 US combat deaths would be acceptable, and 65% said Trump should seek congressional approval first.
Trump told the Journal he has not second-guessed the decision. “I did the right thing,” he said on election night. “I would have done it again.”
Can Vance still win the 2028 nomination?
Vance still holds significant advantages over potential rivals, including high name recognition, consistent leads in primary polling, and his role as finance chair of the Republican National Committee, which keeps him in regular contact with major donors.
But he also drew criticism during the campaign for attacks on Democratic candidates who went on to win, including calling Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed “a little weasel who should shut his mouth.”
Two people close to Vance suggested he run for his old Ohio Senate seat or for governor instead; he rejected both ideas, according to the report.
Trump has declined to endorse a successor. “Maybe he won’t run,” Trump said of Vance on Wednesday. “I don’t know who’s going to run.”
Vance himself acknowledged at a CBS News town hall in October that “there’s a chance” he never runs.
