Behind Scenes, Vance Worked With Pollster To Bolster Argument Against Iran War

As Vice President JD Vance was working to convince President Donald Trump to hold off on launching a war with Iran, he urged a pollster to add questions to his survey to test his belief that voters would be skeptical of military action.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Vance worked with Mark Mitchell, at the time the head pollster for Rasmussen Reports, to survey the public on their feelings about a potential military conflict with Iran. Vance requested Mitchell to survey the public on whether they would support a regime-change war in Iran, how many American casualties they would consider acceptable, and if the president should seek congressional approval before launching an attack, the Journal reported. 

The polling showed a closely divided public which reportedly informed the vice president’s recommendations to Trump about launching strikes targeting Iran. The results of the January 2026 survey, which was obtained by The Daily Wire, found that 44% of likely voters supported military action to target and overthrow the Iranian regime while 43% did not support taking such action. Another 65% said they would want Trump to seek congressional approval and 62% said “an acceptable level of combat deaths for U.S. troops” would be less than 100. 

In addition to the findings that nearly two-thirds of Americans wanted congressional approval for military action and limited casualties, the firm found that 50% of likely voters would support action to defend peaceful Iranian protesters while 38% said they would oppose military intervention. 

Roughly a month after the polling, the United States and Israel began a targeted bombing operation aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities that led to the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei and conflict over the critical Strait of Hormuz.

Since the outbreak of the Iran War, Mitchell has become an outspoken critic of Israel and pushed the unfounded claim that Trump entered the conflict at the behest of Jewish donors. 

In July 2026, he advocated for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and claimed the same month that Trump launched the Iran War because the president’s top “backer, who he said many times only cares about Israel and calls every day to ask for things, is also one of the biggest Chabad donors.” He has also called Israel a genocidal force and “evil.”

When reached for comment about the Wall Street Journal report, Mitchell, who has since left Rasmussen and now runs a firm called The Honest Poll, said he hoped all politicians reviewed his polling. 

“The ability to provide honest and accurate numbers to the White House to aid their decision making is a win for the American people,” he said. “I would hope that politicians of any political persuasion would be open to reviewing my polling.”

Debate over the impact of the Iran War on the Election Day blowout of Republicans across the country has waged as the GOP looks to rebuild after historic losses across the country. Exit polling has shown the war was one of the top issues for voters alongside generally high cost of living, tariffs, and corruption. 

Exit polling conducted by NBC showed that 34% of voters said the war was crucial to their vote for Congress while another 40% said it was a major factor. The same poll found that 63% of voters said the decision to strike Iran was incorrect and 37% of voters said Trump made the right call. 

Other exit polling from CNN found that 74% of voters said the war was a crucial or major factor in their vote. 

Trump has acknowledged that the war and the high gas prices that accompanied it contributed to Republican losses, but said he would make the same decision to launch war against Iran. Others in his administration, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have similarly stated that going to war was a difficult choice that the president was right to make. 

“It would have been very easy to do what multiple presidents before him have done, which is to ignore the Iran thing,” Rubio said during an event with Trump in Florida.

Vance was reportedly one of the few top administration officials who encouraged Trump to pursue a diplomatic rather than a military approach to Iran. In the aftermath of the bloodbath of Republicans across the country, Vance argued that the war was to blame. 

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance said the morning after the crushing election defeats, adding: “The president himself said so last night.”