A midterm ad from Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, attacking Elon Musk's massive spending to defeat him, is being singled out as the sharpest political ad of the cycle, in a sign that running against a billionaire can be a winning strategy.

• Musk has poured over $180 million into stopping Talarico and boosting Ken Paxton, and the ad turns that spending into the main story, framing the race as "the candidate versus the machine" instead of candidate versus candidate.
• The ad borrows a decades-old line, "Texas is not for sale," tying into a broader backlash against tech billionaires buying influence, land, and water.
• On the Republican side, ads tying crime to the cost of living, and class-based appeals blaming "corrupt elites" for problems like wildfires, are standing out as effective in tough political terrain for the GOP.
• A Kansas Republican senator reportedly went rogue, posting his own unapproved ad on social media after his campaign stalled from lack of planning, a sign of a campaign in trouble days before the vote.
• A widely panned attack ad targeting an opponent's mother backfired badly, getting pulled from air and reportedly hurting other Republicans down the ballot in that state.

Outlook: Expect final turnout data and polling misses in red states to be the big story right after election day, with pollsters already flagging that one party's voters are answering surveys more than the other's.