Silver polling averages show Democrats holding widest midterm-cycle lead

A late-September Reuters/Ipsos survey found that only about a third of Americans approved of US strikes on Iran, with more than four in five respondents expecting the conflict to last for an extended period. The same poll put President Donald Trump’s approval among Republicans at 73 percent, down from 82 percent a week earlier. Nate Silver’s polling averages showed Democrats leading Republicans by roughly nine points on the generic congressional ballot — the widest margin of this election cycle, according to Silver.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had privately warned Trump that the conflict could extend through the remainder of his presidency.

The war began after the United States and Israel struck Iran in late February and is now in its eighth month, with the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed before the war — all but closed after the opening strikes. The United States first imposed a blockade on the strait in April, after talks in Islamabad collapsed, and reinstated it in July following a short-lived June deal to end the fighting. Fighting flared again in early September, when US forces struck rocket launchers on Iran’s Larak Island and Tehran responded with missiles aimed at American military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump pledged that the United States “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” adding: “IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” In the same message, Trump said Washington was “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” which he described as “in very bad condition, both Economically and Militarily.” The post did not say what the United States would do after voting day.

In the same post, Trump suggested that oil was moving through the strait in record volumes, claiming “22 Million Barrels, last night alone,” with “not one barrel coming from, or going to, Iran.” The figure could not be independently verified.

Trump’s public posture toward the midterms has shifted in the weeks leading up to his Thursday post. On September 2, as the United States exchanged fire with Iran for the first time in weeks, he told reporters he was “not affected by the election,” adding that he was not on the ballot himself but intended to help his party. A week later, ahead of a Republican “midterm convention” in Dallas, Trump said he expected the war to end almost as soon as the voting was over and accused Tehran of holding out in the hope that a change of power in Congress would allow it to pursue a nuclear weapon. He also conceded at the time that US oil prices were unlikely to fall before polling day.

The Thursday post did not address the Vance and Rubio warnings reported by the Wall Street Journal or lay out any framework for what US action against Iran might look like after November 3.