\n<\/p>\n
Campaigns spent billions of dollars on ads this year. Some worked. Some didn\u2019t. Some were stirring. Some were cringe.<\/p>\n
Most will be quickly forgotten. A few will be remembered.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the most memorable, influential and sometimes incoherent spots of a 2026 midterm election that resulted in one of the biggest Democratic landslides in modern history:<\/p>\n
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, wasn\u2019t supposed to even be in a competitive race. But in the closing stretch, national Republicans redirected money and President Trump made a trip for a rally to try to save her.<\/p>\n
But it was one of her missteps in a TV interview that her Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, packaged into a viral clip about her dismissal of the price of beef. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou know you have so many proteins to choose from,\u201d Ms. Hyde-Smith had said.<\/p>\n
The spot features a parade of Mississippians mocking the idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cPick another protein? She done lost her damn mind. I\u2019d rather pick another senator,\u201d one woman says.<\/p>\n
The spot did not run on television. But Mr. Colom\u2019s post on X featuring the video was widely viewed. And in perhaps the nation\u2019s closest Senate race \u2014 as of now still uncalled but with Mr. Colom narrowly leading \u2014 it drew attention to the Democrat on one of the year\u2019s defining issues: costs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
By the end of the election, there was more than $120 million of advertising referring to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
But one of the earliest Democrats to seize on linking Mr. Epstein to his Republican opponent was the former Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. He ran an ad in the spring accusing Senator Jon Husted of having \u201ctaken the most money from associates of Jeffrey Epstein\u201d of all 535 members of Congress. (The ad highlighted more than $100,000 in campaign contributions Mr. Husted had received in the past from Leslie Wexner, who was the source of much of Mr. Epstein\u2019s wealth; Mr. Husted\u2019s campaign noted that Mr. Brown himself had received campaign donations in the past from Mr. Wexner\u2019s wife.)<\/p>\n
In a year when Democrats tried to push a message that Republicans were serving themselves and the elites over everyday Americans, the closing line foreshadowed the hits to come: \u201cWho\u2019s he really working for?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Brown won the race.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Some admakers still produce spots on instinct and intuition. But many are rigorously tested both before and after for how much they move voters.<\/p>\n
Of all the ads that the House Majority PAC, the top House Democratic super PAC, ran this year, one stood alone as the most effective: This spot highlighting allegations Representative Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, faced from his ex-wife. The ad ticks through some of her accusations, including that he scalded her with hot water from a skillet and fractured his daughter\u2019s collarbone. (Mr. Miller has denied the domestic abuse allegations and claimed that his ex-wife has mental health challenges.)<\/p>\n
The ad moved Mr. Miller\u2019s favorable rating by 15 points, and shifted the race itself nearly 10 points, according to testing data shared by the House Majority PAC.<\/p>\n
The race was one of the ugliest in the country after many Republicans \u2014 including Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, whose daughter is Mr. Miller\u2019s ex-wife \u2014 tried to get Mr. Miller to quit the race. Mr. Miller lost.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump launched Islamophobic attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, calling him a \u201cjihadist\u201d while Republicans suggested he had ties to terrorists.<\/p>\n
The El-Sayed campaign countered in many ways \u2014 including with a memorable ad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did Abdul El-Sayed come from?\u201d a wide-eyed older white woman intones ominously, shot in noirish black and white.<\/p>\n
Then the ad shifts to color.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere!\u201d she shouts gleefully, sitting on a sofa with another older white man. \u201cWe\u2019re his grandparents!\u201d The words \u201cLivingston County, MI\u201d appear on the screen.<\/p>\n
The cheeky spot had $1.8 million spent on it, according to AdImpact, starting right after the Democratic primary, in a bid to neutralize the coming attacks.<\/p>\n
Mr. El-Sayed won the race.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As of Friday, former Gov. Paul LePage of Maine was one of the few Republicans ahead in the vote counting to flip a Democratic seat that had not been redrawn.<\/p>\n
In a district that borders Canada and has pockets of French-speaking populations, Mr. LePage ran a memorable ad in which he took a hard line on illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
The spot showcased the depth of his ties to the community \u2014 he says in French that French was his first language in Lewiston \u2014 and worked in his record as governor, while pitching himself as a supporter of legal immigration, but opposed to illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
Former Gov. Paul LePage is the first candidate I can recall running a bilingual French-English ad \u2014\u00a0and using it to take a hard line on illegal immigration pic.twitter.com\/gO4TSchafD<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) September 22, 2026<\/p>\n One perennial challenge for candidates is to push back on accusations from rivals without repeating the allegations. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in Texas, took a creative approach to that: He ticked through how his experience was different from Ken Paxton\u2019s, his Republican rival, and then he unloaded on Mr. Paxton.<\/p>\n \u201cKen Paxton says I don\u2019t have his experience and he\u2019s right. I\u2019ve never been indicted for fraud,\u201d he says, walking through a warehouse as 3-D words flash across the screen, \u201cI\u2019ve never been reported to the F.B.I. for bribery. I\u2019ve never been impeached by my own party. \u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico on Tuesday became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since 1988.<\/p>\n NEW AD: \u201cKen Paxton says I don’t have his experience \u2014 and he’s right.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been indicted for fraud. I\u2019ve never been reported to the FBI for bribery. I\u2019ve never been impeached by my own party.<\/p>\nJames Talarico\u2019s experience ad<\/h2>\n