Scott Colom has taken a lead of about 2,500 ballots over Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's unresolved Senate race after a week of counting, but the margin is still less than 1% and far from safe. If the lead holds, Colom would become Mississippi's first Democratic senator in nearly four decades and its first black senator in more than 140 years.
That is why the count is drawing so much attention now. The race is still open a week after the midterm elections, and the deadline to certify the results is Friday, leaving just enough time for the remaining ballots to matter. A Colom victory would also end a Republican winning streak in Mississippi Senate races that dates to 1982.
The numbers show why neither side is ready to declare anything. State officials estimate that between 12,000 and 20,000 affidavit ballots were cast, and as of Tuesday morning roughly 15,500 had been processed. The deadline for both affidavit and mail-in ballots was Tuesday, but thousands of postal and affidavit ballots remained uncounted, keeping the result unsettled as the final tally continues to move.
Affidavit ballots are the ones not immediately accepted because of a problem such as a missing or disputed ID on election day, and they are now part of the fight over who finishes ahead. Both parties have sent teams of lawyers into Mississippi, a sign that the margin is close enough to keep legal pressure on the count as the deadline approaches. For a race in a state Donald Trump won in 2024 by more than 22 points, even a small swing has carried outsized weight.
At Jackson State University, students speaking to said they had voted for Colom, and Jamyria Dunn said she wanted to see the state turn blue. “I really feel like a change is what we need,” she said, adding that seeing Mississippi “turn blue” would bring “a light” to her heart. Another student, Journey Moore, put the feeling this way: “On a scale of one to 10, it’s definitely 1,000.”
By Friday, the state has to decide whether Colom's lead survives the ballots still left to count. If it does, Mississippi will not just have a new senator; it will have a result that would rewrite the state's modern political history.
