Vance Says Republicans Have to Work on ‘Turning Out Voters’ in Next Election

Vice President JD Vance has said that the Republican Party needs to “do better” at increasing GOP voter turnout in forthcoming elections after Democratic victories in New York City, Virginia, and New Jersey on Tuesday night.

While it is “idiotic to overreact” to elections in Democratic-led states, Vance wrote on X that Republicans’ coalition is of a “lower propensity,” meaning the GOP has “to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past.”

“We need to focus on the home front. The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day,” the vice president wrote on Wednesday.

“We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”

He added: “The infighting is stupid. I care about my fellow citizens—particularly young Americans—being able to afford a decent life, I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home. If you care about those things too, let’s work together.”

The vice president’s Tuesday remark followed Democratic wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governor races, the New York City mayoral contest, and a California ballot proposition.

Trump did not actively campaign for his party ahead of Election Day 2025. With votes still being counted, he wrote on Truth Social that he “WASN’T ON THE BALLOT” and that the ongoing government shutdown may have resulted in Republican losses.

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who wasn’t on the ballot due to rules around the governorship in Virginia, told reporters on Wednesday that the shutdown likely harmed Republicans’ chances in the state. Northern Virginia, notably, is located close to Washington and includes significant numbers of federal workers, many of whom were likely furloughed due to the shutdown.

“I firmly believe that the government shutdown was a very, very big challenge as we ran into this election,” the governor told reporters. “We have 330,000 government workers here that weren’t getting paid. That is a real challenge heading into an election.”

The shutdown was initiated on Oct. 1 after neither political party could come to an agreement on a stopgap measure to fund the government. Attempts to reopen the government have failed more than a dozen times in the Senate so far, with Trump calling on Republicans in the upper chamber to terminate the filibuster.

The morning after the election, while hosting Senate Republicans at the White House, Trump was more reflective.

“Last night, it was not expected to be a victory,” he told the lawmakers.

The elections were largely in areas that have recently favored Democrats, meaning there could be problems with interpreting what the results could mean for next year’s broader midterm races.

“I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” Trump told Republicans on Wednesday. “I’m not sure it was good for anybody, but we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot.”

The Trump administration has maintained that working-class Americans will soon benefit from recent economic shifts, including tariffs.

“We’re going to see Main Street surge here, along with Wall Street, which we’ve already seen,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” during an interview this week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.