Campaigns spent billions of dollars on ads this year. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some were stirring. Some were cringe.
Most will be quickly forgotten. A few will be remembered.
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:
“Pick another protein?” The affordability ad that defined a Senate race.
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, wasn’t 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.
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.
“You know you have so many proteins to choose from,” Ms. Hyde-Smith had said.
The spot features a parade of Mississippians mocking the idea.
“Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind. I’d rather pick another senator,” one woman says.
The spot did not run on television. But Mr. Colom’s post on X featuring the video was widely viewed. And in perhaps the nation’s closest Senate race — as of now still uncalled but with Mr. Colom narrowly leading — it drew attention to the Democrat on one of the year’s defining issues: costs.
An early hit on Epstein
By the end of the election, there was more than $120 million of advertising referring to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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 “taken the most money from associates of Jeffrey Epstein” 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’s wealth; Mr. Husted’s campaign noted that Mr. Brown himself had received campaign donations in the past from Mr. Wexner’s wife.)
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: “Who’s he really working for?”
Mr. Brown won the race.
The most brutal, and best-testing, House Democratic ad
Some admakers still produce spots on instinct and intuition. But many are rigorously tested both before and after for how much they move voters.
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’s collarbone. (Mr. Miller has denied the domestic abuse allegations and claimed that his ex-wife has mental health challenges.)
The ad moved Mr. Miller’s favorable rating by 15 points, and shifted the race itself nearly 10 points, according to testing data shared by the House Majority PAC.
The race was one of the ugliest in the country after many Republicans — including Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, whose daughter is Mr. Miller’s ex-wife — tried to get Mr. Miller to quit the race. Mr. Miller lost.
A memorable grandparent embrace
Mr. Trump launched Islamophobic attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, calling him a “jihadist” while Republicans suggested he had ties to terrorists.
The El-Sayed campaign countered in many ways — including with a memorable ad.
“Where did Abdul El-Sayed come from?” a wide-eyed older white woman intones ominously, shot in noirish black and white.
Then the ad shifts to color.
“Here!” she shouts gleefully, sitting on a sofa with another older white man. “We’re his grandparents!” The words “Livingston County, MI” appear on the screen.
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.
Mr. El-Sayed won the race.
Parlez-Vous blue to red?
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.
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.
The spot showcased the depth of his ties to the community — he says in French that French was his first language in Lewiston — and worked in his record as governor, while pitching himself as a supporter of legal immigration, but opposed to illegal immigration.
James Talarico’s experience ad
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’s, his Republican rival, and then he unloaded on Mr. Paxton.
“Ken Paxton says I don’t have his experience and he’s right. I’ve never been indicted for fraud,” he says, walking through a warehouse as 3-D words flash across the screen, “I’ve never been reported to the F.B.I. for bribery. I’ve never been impeached by my own party. ”
Mr. Talarico on Tuesday became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since 1988.
Roger Marshall goes rogue
Even Senator Roger Marshall’s own team knew this one was a bad idea.
But when they said no, Mr. Marshall, a Kansas Republican, went ahead anyway. Without his senior campaign team’s knowledge, he arranged for a film crew to produce a spot defending his past lawsuits as an obstetrician against his patients, some of whom eventually faced arrest.
Mr. Marshall was determined to clear his name in the closing days — and thus drew more attention to the story. (The New York Times reported in September that Mr. Marshall had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients, seeking payments of their debts, and at least 81 were arrested for missing court dates. Others faced wage garnishments and Mr. Marshall routinely charged an 18 percent interest rate on the outstanding debts.)
“I never had anyone arrested,” Mr. Marshall says in his would-be ad.
He had sent it to some campaign aides and top leaders moved to block its release. Mr. Marshall began personally texting it to people and it was posted by a local talk-radio host. Mr. Marshall was defeated on Tuesday, as a Democrat won a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time in nearly a century.
Ramaswamy’s ruthless ad
An ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, quickly rocked his race, divided Republicans across the country and became a symbol of the ugly tenor of the midterms.
The explosive spot shows the estranged mother of Mr. Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, describing her as a liar and urging voters not to support her.
Ms. Acton said she had not spoken to her mother since she was 12, after her stepfather was charged with raping her. The sitting governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he found the ad “deeply, deeply troubling” and “just plain wrong.”
Other Republicans, including Mr. Trump, closed ranks around Mr. Ramaswamy.
Vice President JD Vance, a former Ohio senator, said he was “disgusted” to see Republicans “whining” about the ad.
Former President Barack Obama, visiting Ohio to campaign, said he did not “know what’s happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that.”
Mr. Ramaswamy lost to Ms. Acton on Tuesday.
An attack on Cooper that boomeranged
In North Carolina, an ad for the Republican Senate nominee, Michael Whatley, appeared to boomerang and boost Democrats.
The ad, from the flagship super PAC for Republican Senate candidates, the Senate Leadership Fund, featured Ronald Hayes, whose son had been murdered. It blamed the Democratic Senate nominee, former Gov. Roy Cooper, for crime in North Carolina.
The ad had a flaw, Mr. Hayes, a Democrat, told news outlets. He had no problem with Mr. Cooper, he said, and had been misled by Republican operatives about the subject of the commercial.
Mr. Cooper’s campaign rushed out an ad to highlight Mr. Hayes’s account.
“Michael Whatley: Lies, deceit,” a voice in the Cooper campaign’s ad says. “He should never be in the Senate.”
The Cooper campaign spent more money on the pushback ad than anything else all cycle, according to AdImpact’s data, nearly $3 million.
Carter Wrenn, a Republican strategist in North Carolina, said Mr. Cooper’s ad was effective in tarnishing Mr. Whatley’s credibility.
“Because it was true what Cooper was saying,” Mr. Wrenn said, adding that Mr. Whatley’s allies looked “sloppy.”
Mr. Cooper won by a wide margin.
A dismissive ‘cord of wood’ mention drew accusations of elitism
In the waning days before the election, Senator Susan Collins of Maine ran an ad that stunned some Republicans and that Democrats quickly promoted.
The ad showed a retired Maine telecaster, Bill Green, dismissing the Democratic nominee Troy Jackson’s work as a logger. “We’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here,” Mr. Green says. “We’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate.”
Democrats said it was elitist. Mr. Jackson used it to focus attention on a crisis facing Maine residents: heating oil costs that were soaring because of the war in Iran. Half the homes in Maine are heated with fuel oil, and the rising prices became a central issue in the race.
Mr. Jackson said the race was “about a cord of wood” and about Mainers’ struggles to heat their homes. On Halloween, Mr. Jackson walked the streets of Portland, Maine, dressed as a cord of wood, mocking the commercial.
Lance Dutson, a Republican strategist in Maine and a former aide to Ms. Collins, said the ad carried a “tone of condescension” and left an impression that Ms. Collins was out of touch on a crucial issue.
“How that got on the air, I have no idea,” Mr. Dutson said.
Mr. Jackson defeated Ms. Collins.
The post The Good, the Bad and the Cringe: 10 Ads That Defined the Midterms appeared first on New York Times.
