In the nearly three weeks since President Donald Trump struck Iran, conventional wisdom has set in that his base is sticking with him on the war.

It’s true that Trump’s base hasn’t ditched him in huge numbers — and an overwhelming number of MAGA supporters, especially, say they support the war. The opposition from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly and other influencers hasn’t translated to wide swaths of the GOP base itself.

But Trump has alienated some significant portions of his base, and he’s risking alienating more.

A fresh batch of polling in recent days reinforces that.

The focus of these analyses has often been self-described MAGA voters. In most polls, about 9 in 10 of them support the war.

But that shouldn’t be too surprising, given these people are quite literally the ones who identify themselves as supporters of Trump’s political movement.

When you expand the universe to all Republicans and, even more broadly, to 2024 Trump voters, the numbers aren’t nearly as sterling for the president.

A new Reuters-Ipsos poll, for instance, shows 21% of Republicans disapprove of the war. (Americans overall disapprove 59%-37%.)

And a Yahoo News-YouGov poll conducted over the weekend showed not only did 17% of Republicans disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, but so did 24% of people who say they voted for him in 2024.

It’s great for Trump that his devoted supporters are still on board. But that’s still about 1 in 4 people who turned out to vote for him just 16 months ago who don’t like this war. And 15% of those 2024 Trump voters say they “strongly” disapprove, suggesting this is a big deal to them.

In context, these numbers aren’t too surprising. We’ve seen around 1 in 5 Republicans or more opposing Trump on lots of issues over the past year.

But that’s also kind of the point here. These are voters that the GOP probably needs to keep in the fold to avoid a blue wave in the 2026 midterm elections. And here is Trump continually giving many of them reason to be disillusioned. He’s not alienating a majority or anywhere close to it, but it’s still numbers of people who, if they voted Democratic or even just stayed home, could put a huge dent in the number of seats Republicans win.

A good way to think about this is to look back on the Iraq war, which emerged as a real political liability for Republicans two decades ago.

But it wasn’t until 2006 — three years after the war began — that GOP opposition started to creep into the high-teens. That’s basically where we started with the Iran war.

And it’s quite possible we could see support fall, especially if the war drags on and the costs increase.

One of the other really significant facets of the early polling is that Trump’s support in the GOP base is relatively wide but not very deep.

That Yahoo-YouGov poll, for instance, shows only around half of Republicans (49%) and 2024 Trump voters (47%) said they “strongly” support the way Trump is handling Iran. That’s compared to around 8 in 10 Democrats (81%) and 2024 Kamala Harris voters (79%) who strongly disapprove.

So the opposition overall is much more passionate. And around half of Republicans and Trump voters are either critical or lukewarm.

Which suggests they might not be on Trump’s side forever.

A new Strength in Numbers-Verasight poll points to one of the most logical ways that some of them could begin to sour on the war in the near term.

The poll, which was conducted earlier this week, found that 24% of Republicans said the war in Iran wasn’t a good use of taxpayer dollars. Then it asked about what they’d say if the price of gas rose by $1 per gallon. The number saying it wasn’t worth the cost rose to 31% — nearly one-third of Republicans.

Well, guess what: The price of gas has already risen by about $1 since the war began, with no relief in sight.

Throw in the huge amount of money the administration may be seeking (as much as $200 billion) for the war, and the possibility of boots on the ground and increased casualties, and it’s easy to see these lukewarm Trump supporters joining the ranks of war critics.

And it wouldn’t take too many of them to break from Trump for this to start looking a lot like when the Iraq war became a really big problem for Republicans.