Colom leads Hyde-Smith by 43 votes in Mississippi, where thousands of affidavit ballots remain uncounted

Mississippi's U.S. Senate race was separated by a few dozen votes out of nearly a million on Wednesday morning, and no news organization had called it. Democrat Scott Colom, the district attorney for four counties in the Golden Triangle, pulled ahead of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith$ shortly after midnight as late returns arrived from Hinds County and majority-Black counties in the Delta. By 3 a.m. Central time, with about 96 percent of the expected vote counted, Colom led by 43 votes, according to WITN's tally. Thousands of affidavit ballots had not yet been reviewed.

The contest matters beyond Mississippi. Democrats have already been projected to win the Senate majority after flipping six seats, so the outcome here will change the size of that majority rather than its existence. For Mississippi, the stakes are historical. The state has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since John C. Stennis won his last term in 1982, the Mississippi Free Press noted. Colom would also be the state's first Black senator since Blanche K. Bruce, who served from 1874 to 1881.

The count so far

The unofficial numbers moved through the night as counties reported. Shortly before midnight, Hyde-Smith led. Holmes County, the last county to post any results, reported shortly before Colom took the lead, the Mississippi Independent reported. The table below shows three snapshots from local outlets. Each is an unofficial count, and the percentage of precincts reporting differs by source because outlets estimate the expected vote differently.

Sources: WLOX, Mississippi Independent and WITN, citing Associated Press counts.

The independent candidate, Ty Pinkins, held about 2.1 percent. Pinkins was the Democratic nominee for this seat in 2024 and left the party in 2025 to run as an independent. His share is far larger than the gap between the two leading candidates. Whether his presence helped or hurt either of them cannot be established from the returns alone; the Mississippi Free Press said his support looked strongest in some heavily Republican areas outside his home county of Sharkey.

The geography of the vote followed a familiar pattern with one notable exception. Colom won Hinds County, home to Jackson, by 61,793 votes to 14,702, and took more than 87 percent in Claiborne and Jefferson counties, according to the Mississippi Independent. Hyde-Smith won Rankin County with 61.7 percent and the Gulf Coast counties of Jackson and Harrison. The exception was DeSoto County, the fast-growing suburb of Memphis, where Colom led 51.9 percent to 45.7 percent. President Trump carried DeSoto by 24 points in 2024, the Independent noted. In the Golden Triangle, where Colom has served as district attorney since 2016, he won Lowndes County with 57.5 percent, Oktibbeha with 59.9 percent and Clay with 66.5 percent, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

What the candidates said

Neither candidate claimed victory. Hyde-Smith spoke to supporters near Jackson while she still led. "We are in a very good lead right now. We still don't have all the votes in," she said, as quoted by WLOX. "I assure you I will continue to be your U.S. Senator." She said the race would not be called that night.

Colom told his watch party in Jackson that he did not expect final results on election night. "I'm telling you, deep down in my soul, I believe we're about to show the country Mississippi matters," he said, according to WLOX. He also promised to "fight to protect every vote," the Columbus Dispatch reported. Colom's campaign manager, Gerard Henderson, said in a video posted to X that at least 15,000 affidavit ballots remained uncounted statewide, SuperTalk Mississippi reported. That figure comes from the campaign, not from election officials, and we could not independently confirm it.

How the rest of the count works

Mississippi's rules shape the rest of the count, and some of them differ from other states. There is no runoff in a general election for federal office. A plurality wins, as the Mississippi Free Press pointed out; Thad Cochran won this seat in 1978 with 45.3 percent, the Magnolia Tribune recalled. The 2018 special election that first sent Hyde-Smith to a full term had a runoff because special elections follow different rules.

Affidavit ballots are Mississippi's version of provisional ballots. Voters cast them when their eligibility is in question at the polls, for example because they lack an accepted photo ID or appear at the wrong precinct in their county. Election officials review each one after Election Day. Voters who cast an affidavit ballot for lack of ID have until 5 p.m. on November 10 to show an acceptable ID at the circuit clerk's office, under the Secretary of State's 2026 elections calendar, which cites Miss. Code Ann. § 23-15-573(3)(d).

Mailed absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they arrive by 5 p.m. on November 10, according to the same calendar, citing § 23-15-637(1)(a). That five-business-day window was the subject of a long court fight. The Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party sued to block it, and the Fifth Circuit ruled in their favor in October 2024. On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court reversed that decision 5–4 in Watson v. Republican National Committee, holding that federal Election Day statutes do not bar counting ballots postmarked by Election Day, per the case summary. The ruling means the grace period is in force for this count. Our report on the Supreme Court's refusal to set aside California mail ballots covers a separate dispute over post-election ballot handling this week.

1. 2026-11-10Deadline for mailed absentee ballots to arrive and for voter-ID affidavit voters to show ID (5 p.m.)
2. 2026-11-13County election commissions transmit certified returns to the Secretary of State
3. 2026-12-03Secretary of State declares the general election results

Source: Mississippi Secretary of State, 2026 Elections Calendar

Counties must send certified returns to the Secretary of State by November 13, and the Secretary of State declares the results by December 3, the calendar says. The calendar notes that its dates are for planning and subject to change.

One rule stands out. Mississippi has no recount procedure. "Mississippi law does not provide for automatic or requested recounts," Ballotpedia's summary of state recount law says; candidates cannot request one at any margin. What a candidate can do is examine the ballot boxes. Under Miss. Code Ann. § 23-15-911, any candidate or a representative authorized in writing may make a full examination of a ballot box and its contents within 12 days after the county canvass, with three days' notice to opposing candidates and in the presence of the circuit clerk. The box is then resealed. Beyond that, a challenge would have to come through an election contest in court. The Senate itself is the final judge of its members' elections under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, though contests there are rare.

Where the race stood before the vote

Public polling in this race was sparse, and most of it was sponsored by Democratic-aligned groups, which readers should weigh. The most detailed public survey was by Data for Progress for Way to Lead PAC, Democracy Alliance and Democracy Strategy Partners. It surveyed 1,018 likely Mississippi voters from August 5 to 15, 2026, by text message, live calls and web panel, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points, according to the sponsors' release. On the initial three-way ballot, Hyde-Smith led 44 percent to 38 percent, with Pinkins at 7 percent. After respondents read candidate biographies, the race moved to 40 percent each. The same release gave Hyde-Smith a net favorability of minus 10 and found 57 percent of voters had not heard enough about Colom to form an opinion. A biography test measures how views shift after information is presented; it is not a prediction of the vote.

Source: Data for Progress release; WITN. Pinkins drew 7% in the poll and about 2.1% in the count.

A second survey circulated in October under the name Wedgewood Polls. Newsweek retracted its article on that poll after the firm said its results were fabricated as a "social experiment," according to the retraction notice. We do not report its figures. The practical point is that the race ended far closer than any credible public survey showed, which is consistent with the national pattern on Tuesday. Democrats also flipped seats in South Carolina and Texas, two states that had not elected a Democratic senator in decades.

Prediction markets priced the race too. Our Mississippi Senate race page tracks contract prices from five market sources. Those are prices paid by traders, not polls, and they do not establish how likely any outcome was.

The campaign behind the margin

The two candidates had a history before this race. In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked President Biden's nomination of Colom to a federal judgeship in the Northern District of Mississippi. She cited donations to his district attorney campaign from a PAC tied to George Soros and his support for transgender rights, the Mississippi Free Press reported. Colom's nomination lapsed.

The 2026 campaign drew national figures to a state that rarely sees them. Trump held a rally for Hyde-Smith in Corinth on October 26. Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned for Colom in Tupelo and Columbus. In late October, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said a Colom ad that used an AI-generated depiction of Hyde-Smith may have broken state law; Colom said he would delete the ad, Mississippi Today reported.

Hyde-Smith's 567politics profile carries a campaign-finance snapshot drawn from the Federal Election Commission. The snapshot, retrieved on November 3, 2026, covers PAC contributions reported on line 11(c) of her principal committee's Form 3 filings for the 2026 cycle; it is not a total of all receipts and excludes individual donors. The largest reported PAC contributor in that subset was the Committee Organized for the Trading of Cotton PAC of the American Cotton Shippers Association at $11,000 over three transactions, followed by several farm, credit-union and industry PACs at $10,000 each, per the FEC candidate record. Through June 30, 2026, Hyde-Smith reported raising about $5.46 million to Colom's $2.38 million, according to FEC summaries compiled by the Wikipedia article on the race. Those are campaign receipts; independent spending by outside groups is reported separately and is not included. None of this establishes any link between contributions and either candidate's positions.

Arguments on each side

Hyde-Smith's closing message was continuity. She told supporters she had run "a very good campaign" and would "continue to be your U.S. Senator," and she campaigned alongside Trump, whose rally in Corinth tied her candidacy to his administration. Her 2023 objections to Colom's judicial nomination, which cited the Soros-linked PAC donations and his positions on transgender rights, previewed the lines her side used in the race, per the Mississippi Free Press. Colom's closing message was turnout and competitiveness. He told supporters the campaign was "trending in counties people thought we had no chance to compete in, and we're winning them," the Columbus Dispatch reported, and his election-night post cited "historic voter turnout." Both messages were made before the vote; a near-tie suggests neither persuaded a clear majority.

Pinkins's 2 percent is not evidence that his voters would otherwise have chosen Colom; some may have stayed home or voted for Hyde-Smith. We did not find a post-election statement from his campaign.

What people are saying online

Our usual method is to sample threads on X and Reddit directly. During this run, Reddit's listings and X's pages were not reachable from our research desk, so what follows is a narrow selection of posts surfaced through web search, with their permalinks. We could not open the posts themselves to confirm wording or engagement counts, and we report no like or repost figures. Treat these as examples of expressed views, not as a measure of opinion in Mississippi or anywhere else.

Colom's own account posted early Wednesday that the race was "too close to call" and that the campaign would "make sure every single vote has been counted," adding that he was "confident we will ultimately flip this seat" (permalink). NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur posted that the race was too close to call with Colom ahead by 28 votes and more than 96 percent counted (permalink). A user posting as Garrett Herrin, whose location we could not confirm, noted that Mississippi allows no automatic or candidate-requested recounts, so a narrow margin would not trigger one (permalink). That reading matches the state's law as summarized above.

No representative poll of Mississippians' reaction to the count exists yet. We found none from Hyde-Smith's official account addressing the overnight shift in the lead, and her campaign had not issued a statement on the affidavit count as of this report.

What remains unknown

The outcome. The number of affidavit ballots is unconfirmed, and their partisan lean is unknown, though they are often cast in urban precincts. The number of mailed ballots still in transit is also unknown. Whether either campaign will examine ballot boxes or file a contest will depend on the final margin. The Senate's new majority is settled; its exact size, and whether Mississippi joins the list of states that changed parties on Tuesday, will wait for the clerks.

Differing perspectives

Should Mississippi count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, and every affidavit ballot, before settling a Senate race this close?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• Count every affidavit and postmarked ballot, then certify

  Who holds it: Scott Colom's campaign and its supporters, including his campaign manager Gerard Henderson

  Colom's campaign argues that the race is not over until every lawfully cast vote is counted. It says at least 15,000 affidavit ballots remain to be reviewed, that voters who lacked an ID at the polls have until November 10 to cure their ballots under state law, and that mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day are valid under the Supreme Court's June 2026 ruling. The campaign says historic turnout, including in counties where Democrats rarely compete, shows voters want a change and that the lead will hold once the review is complete.

  In their words: Scott Colom, campaign account on X, Nov. 4, 2026 ↗

• End the count on Election Day

  Who holds it: The Republican National Committee under Chairman Joe Gruters, which challenged Mississippi's five-day receipt window in Watson v. RNC

  The RNC argues that "Election Day should mean exactly what it says" and that ballots arriving after the polls close should not count in federal races. After losing at the Supreme Court in June 2026, Gruters said the ruling made it "even more imperative that Congress pass the SAVE America Act" and that allowing elections to "drag on for days and weeks" invites chaos. The party says it will keep pressing, in Congress and in court, for elections to end on Election Day.

  In their words: Republican National Committee, press release, June 29, 2026 ↗

• Expect the lead to hold once all votes are in

  Who holds it: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and her campaign

  Hyde-Smith told supporters on election night that she was in "a very good lead" and that the race would not be called until all votes were in. Her campaign's position is that the remaining count will confirm her re-election, that she ran a strong campaign aligned with President Trump's agenda for Mississippi, and that she will continue to serve as the state's senator. She has not asked for any change to the counting process, and her side has not alleged any irregularity in the returns reported so far.

  In their words: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, remarks to supporters quoted by WLOX, Nov. 4, 2026 ↗

• Timely-cast ballots must count regardless of arrival date

  Who holds it: State attorneys general who defended receipt windows in Watson v. RNC, including Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown

  Supporters of receipt windows argue that a voter who mails a ballot before Election Day has done everything the law asks, and that postal delays should not cancel that vote. Brown said the Supreme Court "affirmed Maryland's authority to set its own election rules" and protected voters' trust that timely-cast ballots will be counted. On this view, states may set their own deadlines, and a close race is exactly when counting every valid ballot matters most.

  In their words: Office of the Maryland Attorney General, statement, June 29, 2026 ↗