We are now 12 days from Election Day with early voting underway in more than half the states.
For voters in the districts and states with the most competitive races, that means a nonstop barrage of ads, whether on TV, streaming or online.
And as the campaign has entered its final stretch, those ads are likely to be among the cycle’s most dramatic and controversial, delivering candidates’ closing arguments, whether funded by their campaigns or outside groups.
According to AdImpact, political ad spending this cycle has already surpassed $10 billion and is projected to reach a record $11.6 billion by Election Day, exceeding the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 cycle.
So, what are some of the most notable ads of this final stretch of the 2026 campaign? And what do they say about the candidates and groups running them?
One of the most controversial ads of the cycle came this week from Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor and featured the estranged mother of his opponent, Democrat Amy Acton, calling Acton “a liar” and urging Ohio voters not to support her.
The ad went viral after it was posted online by an Ohio blogger, who claims he “got the video from a voter who viewed it as part of a poll and recorded it.” It was then shard by right-wing accounts without identifying who paid for or produced it.
In the spot, Acton’s mother, from whom Acton has been estranged for more than 50 years, says,
I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent—and it’s not easy for a mother to say this—but Amy has a serious problem.
She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.
Acton has been open about being sexually abused at the age of 12 by her stepfather. While the ad doesn’t directly dispute her account of abuse, right-wing accounts initially amplified its claim that Acton has lied about her past.
But even the conservative outlet The National Review reported that court records support key parts of Acton’s account, including the sexual abuse charges against her stepfather and her removal from her mother’s custody.
Donna Arthur, Acton’s estranged mother,
[says in the ad]that life in Ohio “will only get worse” with Acton in the governor’s mansion, and she disputes parts of Acton’s personal history. But Acton has long maintained — even before becoming a political candidate — that she grew up in an unstable home when she lived with her mother following her parents’ divorce, even spending a winter in a tent in a campground outside of Youngstown and enduring sexual abuse by one of her mother’s male partners. Court records confirm many key parts of Acton’s account of her life.
By Tuesday evening, Ramaswamy acknowledged his campaign had produced the ad, and defended its message that Acton is a liar.
Ramaswamy is 𝕏reportedly putting $4 million behind the ad on TV through Election Day. 𝕏Vice President JD Vance has publicly defended it.
The extraordinary (if that is the right word) thing about the story is that Ramaswamy is sticking with the smear even after it became clear that he was politicizing a childhood rape. But this is consistent with what we continue to learn about Ramaswamy’s character — and the willingness of folks like JD Vance to join in the defamation.
The ad has also drawn criticism from within Ramaswamy’s own party.
Republican critics include 𝕏Nikki Haley, Rep. 𝕏Nancy Mace and 𝕏Meghan McCain. Today, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine 𝕏denounced the ad and urged Ramaswamy to “take it down.”
“The ad, on its face is, deeply, deeply troubling. But when you know the rest of the story, when you know the backstory, when you know that the husband of the mom was indicted by a grand jury after hearing testimony, and then he took off along with the mother. When you know that, it just... makes it more serious. It makes it just more wrong. So it’s wrong to run this... I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down.”
Sherrod Brown, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Ohio, has 𝕏urged his Republican opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, to denounce the ad as well.
Acton responded with an ad of her own featuring her brother corroborating her account of abuse, and calling Ramaswamy “unfit to lead.”
The Columbus Dispatch’s editorial board endorsed Acton after the ad emerged, calling it “revolting and unsettling.” In its endorsement, the board called Acton
“someone with a vision for a better Ohio and the compassion and determination we need at this critical moment.”
Acton also received 𝕏$500,000 from Illinois first lady MK Pritzker, a boost in a race where, per Sykes, “the GOP have aired $140 million in ads, outspending the Democrat by something like 3-ro-1.”
Nate Silver’s forecast currently has Acton up 4 percentage points over Ramaswamy, raising the stakes for Republicans already defending vulnerable seats in the House and Senate.
The ad has the makings of an “October surprise,” with millions of campaign dollars behind it. But Ramaswamy risks a surprise of his own if the attack pushes more Ohio voters toward Acton on Nov. 3.
Scott Colom faces long odds as a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Mississippi. I wrote about Scott’s race as one of Democrats’ long-shot pickup opportunities in August after Pete Buttigieg endorsed his campaign.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) has been campaigning for Colom for months, steering and helping raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign.
And former President Barack Obama appeared in an endorsement ad for the Democrat.
Colom has also drawn national attention with a viral ad he released earlier this month.
The spot, which Colom released on Oct. 13, features a clip from February of his opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, dismissing concerns about the rising beef prices, saying “there are so many proteins to choose from.”
In the ad, Mississippians mock the Senator’s remarks, saying they’d rather “pick another Senator instead.”
The ad’s viral success appears of to have given Colom’s campaign a boost.
Sen. Chuck Schumer 𝕏confirmed that Senate Majority PAC would put $1.2 million toward a new ad on Colom’s behalf.
The Cook Political Report has 𝕏moved the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
Today, former Vice President Kamala Harris is in Mississippi campaigning with Colom.
Colom’s hometown newspaper, The Commercial Dispatch, 𝕏has also endorsed him.
But perhaps the clearest sign that Republicans are taking Colom seriously: Trump is scheduled to travel to Mississippi to campaign with Hyde-Smith on Monday.
Sherrod Brown’s campaign for U.S. Senate released an ad that, like Colom’s, attacks his opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, using Husted’s own words.
The bulk of the ad features Ohioans watching a clip of Husted from back in March suggesting that poor people need to learn how to manage their money. As with Hyde-Smith’s remarks, the disconnect with people struggling to afford basic necessities serves as a brutal indictment.
The ad sets up the clip with the opening line:
“Listen to this shit.”
And another delivers the verdict at the end:
“Fuck that!”
The ad was built for social media, with the opening line “Listen to this shit” designed to stop people scrolling through their feeds. Brown blasted it across Facebook, 𝕏X, Instagram, ♪TikTok, BlueSky and YouTube on Sept. 29, all with the same caption:
“NEW AD: Listen to this sh*t”
The caption itself, which simply names the ad, stands out for its unusually blunt language from the mild-mannered Brown.
Chris Cillizza ▶explained on YouTube why he considers this “the most effective ad this cycle.”.
While it is light-hearted, the ad attacks Husted for being out of touch at a moment when the cost of living is top of voters’ minds.
It is also the ad of a candidate who believes he is winning. And indeed, Nate Silver’s forecast has Sherrod Brown leading Husted by almost 4 percentage points.
As of mid-September, AdImpact put ad spending inthe Ohio Senate race at $298 million, more than any other Senate race at that point, with weeks of ads still ahead for Ohio voters.
In July, the New York Times reported that Elon Musk was planning to spend at least $100 million through his America PAC to help Republicans retain control of Congress in November.
As the Times wrote:
Mr. Musk’s group plans to initially target Senate races in at least five states — Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio — and is having conversations about the contests in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas, according to two people with knowledge of the super PAC’s plans.
That money has helped fund a series of anti-trans ads targeting Democrats in Ohio, Alaska, Iowa and Texas.
There’s a reason for that. Despite Donald Trump winning all four states in 2024 by more than 10 points, each now has a competitive race that could determine control of the Senate.
Musk’s decision to use anti-trans ads in these races should come as little surprise. Musk has made no secret of his anti-trans views and is estranged from his transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson. The ads also echo Donald Trump’s “Kamala is for They/Them” ad from two years ago, which was widely seen as brutally effective in his successful 2024 campaign.
Here is America PAC’s first ad, which aired in Ohio in early September:
Andrew Arenge, who tracks digital political ads at the University of Pennsylvania, compiled several digital versions in a thread:
The ads do not appear to have shifted the races. Democrats are now more favored to win the Senate than they were when the ads started running.
As Dan Pfeiffer argued at The Message Box, there is a very good reason why the ads flopped:
The bigger problem is that by spending so much time talking about Trans issues, Republicans are doing exactly what they accused Kamala Harris of doing: focusing on something other than what voters most want them to focus on.
This election is singularly about costs. Trump’s decision to raise costs via dumb tariffs and even dumber wars is why one in four Trump voters now regret voting for him, per
[Navigator Research.]The Republicans’ biggest vulnerability is that voters simply don’t think they are focused on rising prices. In a recent Navigator Research poll, 60 percent of voters rank inflation and the cost of living as a top issue, but only 19 percent think Trump and the Republicans are focused on it.Narrowing that gap is how Republicans stave off the Big Blue Wave and hold on to the Senate. Yet Trump and the Republicans rarely talk about costs. When Trump does, he denies reality and says prices are down. Gaslighting voters is never a good strategy. By spending millions on anti-trans ads, Republicans are making their central problem worse, not better.
Musk is also the benefactor donor behind the Senate Leadership Fund’s new Texas PAC, in what the Texas Tribune called “Republicans’ massive rescue mission for Ken Paxton.”
The Tribune reported:
Musk, who lives near the SpaceX Starbase facility in South Texas, appears to have poured nearly $190 million into the U.S. Senate race in his adopted home state. His role in financing Paxton’s air support was disclosed in reports filed Thursday to the Federal Election Commission by Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s main super PAC and the biggest spender in Texas’ Senate contest.
As with America PAC, transgender issues feature in Texas PAC’s attacks.
As Judd Legum of Popular Information reported on Oct. 1, Texas PAC also released an ad falsely accusing Democrat James Talarico of wanting to “put parents in jail if they do not support sexually transitioning their children.”
As Legum wrote:
Two hours after I reached out to Texas PAC about the ad, which was running on Meta platforms, it was taken offline.
But now, as Ari Drennen notes, the anti-trans ads may be backfiring for an unexpected reason.
Meanwhile, Progress Action Fund, has released its own ad, the latest in its series featuring an older actor as a “Republican Congressman,” this time checking whether a girl in her school bathroom “really is a girl.”
As The Advocate reports,
The 30-second spot, entitled
[“Republicans In Your Bathroom,”]targets the GOP over its fixation on restricting trans people’s access to restrooms and locker rooms. The ad, which The Hill reports is part of a larger buy worth over $1 million per[The Hill], begins with a young girl entering a bathroom and to her horror, encountering an older white-haired man sitting in the stall waiting for her. He greets her with a short hello. Immediately, the girl presses the man for answers, “What are you doing? Who are you?”
According to The Advocate, the ad began running on TV and streaming services Oct. 13 in Ohio and Texas.
Musk’s Texas PAC’s advertising has gone beyond transgender issues.
The group also aired pro-Paxton ads, including one featuring Paxton’s estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, speaking directly to the camera and urging voters to support “the Republican ticket,” without once mentioning Ken Paxton’s name.
As Josh Barro points out, while Angela Paxton says “let’s talk about the elephant in the room” in the ad, she never addresses the fact that she filed for divorce “on biblical grounds” citing adultery.
As Molly Jong-Fast observes:
Another ad, this one from Ken Paxton’s campaign, used an AI-generated…
