GOP Candidates and Voters Turn Against Iran War Amid Rising Costs

A growing number of GOP candidates are calling for an end to the nearly seven-month-long war on the campaign trail, even in traditionally red parts of the U.S. On Capitol Hill, the latest war powers resolution weighed by the House was approved with fresh Republican support. And recent polls show that as the conflict has stretched on and hit Americans’ wallets, approval of Trump’s handling of the war among Republican voters has dropped by double digits.

At the same time, however, he has also recently predicted that the conflict will end after the midterms. And not long after levying a fresh threat in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, he told reporters at the diplomatic gathering that he had a “very good” meeting with “mediators of Iran.”

Darling asserts that much of the discontent over the war in Iran stems from its inflationary impact within the U.S. A Congressional Budget Office report released last week found that the war has driven up energy prices in the U.S. mainly due to disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route through which one fifth of the world’s crude oil flows, adding 2.3 percentage points to the annualized rate of inflation of 5.3% in the second quarter of 2026. The price of regular gasoline is up around 52% from the start of the war at around $4.48 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with diesel prices up 71% in the same period.

For many Americans, these rising prices are among the most important issues when voting in the midterms. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from late August showed that 47% of voters said the cost of living would be the single most important factor for them when deciding who to vote for in November.

On top of that, support for the war is low, with only a quarter of Americans believing that it’s worthwhile, according to the same poll. And though Republicans still back the conflict in greater shares than Democratic and independent voters, surveys show that their sentiments toward it have notably soured in the months since it began. A YouGov poll conducted between Sept. 18 and 21 found that a slim majority of 53% of Republicans say that in hindsight going to war in Iran was the right decision, a drop of 15 percentage points from the 68% that said the same in April. Another recent poll conducted for CNN by SSRS found that Republican approval of the war fell from 73% in March to 60% in the latest survey period of Sept. 16-17. Among Republicans under the age of 45, 53% disapproved of the war.

Republican fears that the party could lose control of Congress in the midterms have meanwhile been on the rise, fueled by election forecasters shifting key battleground states and districts toward Democrats in their ratings and polls indicating that voters favor Democratic congressional candidates on generic ballots.

“You have some Republicans who are anti-interventionists, and some who are realists, and look at the situation in Iran and just don't see an end game,” Darling says, making reference to the U.S.’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he said voters look to with fear as a “very similar circumstance” to Iran.

Miller-Meeks, who served for more than two decades in the U.S. Army, voiced a similar sentiment in a post on X—as well as referencing the conflict’s impact on gas prices. “I said it in March: the mission had to stay focused and limited, because Americans do not want another forever war,” she wrote. “I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump.”