US Vice President JD Vance has squarely blamed the Republican party’s midterm election bloodbath on the Iran war, stating: “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.”

A wave of anger at President Donald Trump’s policies led to Democrats flipping seats in deeply Republican states to take control of both the Senate and Congress in landslide victories on Wednesday (AEST).

As the blame game began, Vance took to X on Wednesday night (AEST) to give his view on why “a lot of” Trump-Vance supporters were “pissed” and voted “for the other guys”.

“There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is,” Vance said in his first words after the election wipeout.

“The reason we lost is the war. The President himself said so last night.”

It was the closest Vance has come to openly criticising Trump.

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay,” he said.

“But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

Asked about Vance’s perspective later, Trump conceded the war had played a role. It was “largely true” that the Iran war was to blame, he said, because “it drove the gasoline up a little bit, short term”.

But Trump said he would have done the same thing, adding it was fuel prices — not to the war itself — that had upset voters.

Earlier, Trump told Fox News the Middle East conflict had ​weighed ​on Republican candidates, even ​as voters backed his ‌handling of it.

“I think a part of it was Iran, but at the same time people understood the importance of ​what I’ve done with Iran,” he said.

Democrats and Republicans are now squaring up for what could be two years of deadlock in Washington.

So far the Democrats have won 54 seats to the Republicans’ 44 seats in the Senate and 237 to 139 in Congress.

The resurgent Democrats have vowed to use their resounding majorities to rein in Trump, who ‌signalled he is ready to continue flexing the US executive branch’s considerable powers.

It will be the first time that Trump, a Republican who also held the White House from 2017 to 2021, has had to contend with a Democratic-controlled Congress.

But in a reminder of the power he still holds, he posted a photo of one of his signature red baseball caps with the word VETO replacing the trademark MAGA.

President Donald Trump posted this photo to Truth Social.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is on track to become the first black speaker of the House, said Democrats would “work hard” to make life more affordable, while urging Trump to end his unpopular war before the next Congress is seated.

Trump had cast the midterm elections as a referendum on him, repeatedly urging his ​Republican base to “pretend I’m on the ballot” — a message Democratic Party leaders were happy to amplify.

But after the result, Trump said the real reason Republicans lost was because he wasn’t on the ballot.

“If I was on the ballot we would’ve won, we would’ve won it all very easily,” he told Politico, adding that voters “didn’t like the [Republican] candidates in most cases”.

Voters in conservative strongholds who had propelled Trump to his second term in office just two years ago swung dramatically toward Democrats, fuelled by deep frustration over the unpopular Middle East war, anxiety about the high cost of living and anger at Trump’s stewardship of the country.

In Texas, the biggest Republican-led state before Tuesday, Democrats ended a decades-long losing streak in seismic fashion, winning their first Senate seat there since 1998 and ousting three-term Governor Greg Abbott.

Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and in South Carolina, a state that Trump carried by nearly 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate.

Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat from the party’s rising left wing, won Michigan’s open Senate seat, becoming the first Muslim elected to the chamber.

He defeated Mike Rogers, a former congressman and FBI agent, who entered the race with Trump’s backing and sought to falsely portray El-Sayed, an Egyptian American born in Michigan, as a religious extremist.

“You chose hate, and Michigan chose hope,” El-Sayed told cheering supporters on Tuesday night, referring to Rogers.

Once seated in January, Democrats are expected to use their power ⁠to investigate Trump’s administration, family and allies and demand concessions on major legislation. However, ‌until then, Republicans hold the reins.

Trump, who is barred by the US Constitution from seeking a third term, has exercised an iron grip on his party ​for most of the past ‌decade. He congratulated Democrats for doing “a good job,” in uncharacteristically conciliatory media interviews overnight.

“The Democrats did a good job. They fought hard,” he said.

But he maintained the midterms were not a referendum on him, saying: “I don’t view it as a hit on me.”

The results leave Trump — who watched the results roll in from the White House – with dramatically diminished political capital at home and abroad.

A Democratic majority will be armed with control of committees, bigger budgets and staff, and subpoena powers that could compel the administration to be responsive to Congress.

Trump is also bracing for major legislative fights, saying he had a “strong veto” to use when Democrats sent “insane” bills to his desk.

“After a couple of months of vetoes, ​they’ll call and ‌they’ll say, ‘How do we get this ​stuff done?’. And we’ll work together,” he said.

-with AAP and AP