Iran War Costs Put Trump’s Foreign Policy on Trial

A Gallup poll found that 77% of voters considered the Iran war extremely or very important ahead of the Nov. 3, 2026 midterm elections, as 72% said gas prices mattered. The war and its rising energy costs have turned a presidential promise into a test at the ballot box.

Foreign Policy columnist Emma Ashford argued that voters’ anger over the war shouldn’t be mistaken for a wholesale rejection of President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy approach or a demand to restore the old bipartisan consensus. She said voters were reacting to the war itself and to a president who promised “no new wars” and lower living costs. The distinction matters to anyone hoping an election can do more than register discontent: a vote against one war isn’t necessarily a vote against the machinery that makes foreign policy.

The cost of decisions made above

Ashford said the war affected voters partly through higher energy costs and inflation. Tariffs also contributed to living costs, she noted, but much of the inflation-related pain came from energy prices that rose after the war began. The costs reach households; the decisions that helped produce them are made by those holding state power.

Foreign policy rarely drives voting, Ashford wrote. In a 2020 Pew Research Center poll, no foreign-policy issue ranked among voters’ top 10 concerns; the economy, health care, Supreme Court appointments and violent crime all ranked higher. The 2026 numbers mark a different moment: the Iran war placed among the top three issues, while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also appeared in the top 10.

The only recent midterm in which foreign policy took center stage, Ashford said, was 2002. A post-Sept. 11 “rally around the flag” effect helped President George W. Bush’s Republican Party regain Senate control. Other examples of foreign-policy views potentially affecting votes included Florida’s Cuban exile community and Arab American abstentions in Michigan in 2024.

A narrow ballot, not a blank check

Voters remain divided on what the United States should do abroad. Americans generally supported NATO, but many wanted Europeans to contribute more to defense. Forty-nine percent wanted to reduce military aid to other nations. Although voters disapproved of closing the U.S. Agency for International Development, 17% wanted to expand humanitarian aid.

Ashford also wrote that Trump’s détente with China was popular and only 40% of those polled supported actively limiting China’s rise. If Democrats win the Senate, they might initiate impeachment hearings against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concerning the Iran war and U.S. military actions in the Caribbean. Some congressional Democrats were also pressing for a dispute with Trump over arms to Ukraine. Those possible moves are still disputes inside the same political institutions; Ashford cautioned Democrats not to treat election results as a mandate to restore the previous bipartisan foreign-policy consensus.

Class politics takes the microphone

A New York Times Magazine article described a shift in Democratic campaign strategy through Texas gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa. If she defeated Gov. Greg Abbott, she would become the first Latina to lead Texas and the first woman elected governor there since 1990. Hinojosa rarely discussed race or gender, said she wanted to avoid “culture wars,” and campaigned on economic populism.

At a rally, she asked: “Is this going to be a Texas that is by and for the people? Or is it a billionaire’s world and we just live here? That is the one fight. It is the one fight of this election. It is the fight in America. And it is the fight for Texas.” The article described a Democratic consensus in blunt terms: “Race and gender are out. Class politics are back in.”

It attributed that shift to Trump’s 2024 return to the White House after he campaigned as a stronger steward of the economy. Between 2020 and 2024, Trump nearly doubled his support among Black voters, nearly matched Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, gained among Asian Americans and held his support among women. The article said his return weakened the assumption, dominant since the 2010s, that identity served as a proxy for societal progress, and described identity politics as retreating. The ballot may register anger, but the source’s own account offers no promise that the institutions receiving those votes will surrender their grip.