Did the Sleaziest Political Ads From the 2026 Midterms Work?

Democratic political strategist Dane Strother once observed that “negative ads and campaigns do work—and have for more than 2,000 years.” (Political slams have been unearthed in Pompeii.)

“The day that negative ads no longer are effective,” he added, “they no longer will be used.”

Has that day arrived? Based on the midterm results, it seems closer.

Last week, ADWEEK waded through the muck to pick out the four most egregious ads of the 2026 midterms. Even by the mudslinging standards of American political life, these spots hit below the belt. 

They included Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas charging that his opponent Adam Hamilton “protected” a child molester, and Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s now infamous ad in which the mother of his opponent Amy Acton—who has said she was sexually abused by her father—calls her a liar.

So, how well did these ads work? Not very. Three of the candidates behind these ads wound up losing their races.

While a man later convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery did work briefly at a summer camp run by pastor Hamilton, Marshall’s equating that to his opponent’s having “protected a pedophile” was apparently too much.

Voters also didn’t much care for California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton using AI-generated girls sexually experimenting in a bedroom as a means of encouraging Democrats to vote Republican.

As for Ramaswamy’s ad, Acton told CNN that the ad that questioned her sexual abuse allegations—and used her own mother to do it—“crossed everyone’s boundaries.” Voters clearly agreed, electing her by a 7.9 margin.

From our low-blow list, only Democrat Brian Poindexter won his congressional race in Ohio’s 7th district with the help of an ugly ad that reminded voters that incumbent Republican Max Miller’s wife Emily Moreno has accused him of domestic abuse. (Miller has denied the charges.)

But as NBC affiliate WKYC reported, Poindexter had already been winning supporters by touting his blue-collar background as an ironworker well before the abuse allegations started getting media traction.

The big takeaway from 2026 might actually lay in research published by Cambridge University way back in 2014. Down and dirty ads, it said, “have become so popular in practice,” even though “there is so little evidence that they work especially well.”