Scott Colom leads Mississippi Senate race by over 2,800 votes, New York Times reports

Democrat Scott Colom led Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by more than 2,800 votes late Tuesday as Mississippi's deadlines for affidavit and mailed absentee ballots passed, The New York Times reported. This is a developing story and will be updated.

At 9:45 p.m. Eastern, the contest could still turn on 2,578 mail-in absentee votes awaiting a count, along with an unknown number of affidavit votes. A victory would make Colom Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction.

Only Mississippi and Alaska have uncalled 2026 Senate contests. Democrats are assured at least 54 seats in January and could reach 56 by taking both races.

Hyde-Smith told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, "Votes should be counted, and that's all we're concentrating on today."

It was unclear Tuesday night how many provisional votes would qualify, how many absentee votes had arrived on time or when a winner would be declared.

A narrow race and a ballot request

The candidates were separated by a few dozen votes at one point the morning after the election.

Hyde-Smith's X account said on Nov. 5, "We believe thousands of votes remain to be counted from dozens of Republican counties," and predicted they would "reinforce her path to victory."

Cindy Hyde-Smith is going to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate for the next six years. We believe thousands of votes remain to be counted from dozens of Republican counties, and we are confident those votes will reinforce her path to victory.

Election officials

— Cindy Hyde-Smith (@cindyhydesmith) November 5, 2026

Both parties have dispatched lawyers to Mississippi. Hyde-Smith's campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee asked each of the 82 counties to set aside and retain affidavit ballots and related materials.

Colom's campaign called the request a "desperate stunt." His attorney told county election commissioners in a letter that Mississippi law provides no basis for the demands.

State Republican Party Chair Mike Hurst, who said on Nov. 5 that the race "is far from being over," said the party would accept either result if "the laws are followed and the voters spoke."

"We're in the process of counting them for the accuracy and the checking to see if each individual lives in the precinct that they say they live in," Hinds County Election Commissioner Jermal Clark told AFP about the affidavit ballots.

State officials estimated that voters cast 12,000 to 20,000 affidavit ballots, with roughly 15,500 processed by Tuesday morning. BBC News reported the estimate.

In a hallway interview Tuesday, Hyde-Smith told CBS News, "We got a few thousand out so we're feeling very optimistic." CBS News' Caitlin Huey-Burns asked if she could have done more to avoid such a close contest.

"I think we worked very hard and had a very good campaign," Hyde-Smith said.

.@CHueyBurns Do you think that there was more that you could have done to make this race less competitive than it is.

HYDE SMITH: I think we worked very hard and had a very good campaign.

— Alan He (@alanhe) November 10, 2026

Voters and the affidavit process

Zemaryiah Johnson, 18, a first-year student at Tougaloo College, a historically Black institution, cast an affidavit ballot for Colom. She made multiple calls and took a car pool to the Madison County Circuit Clerk's Office to get it counted, but was told to visit an adjoining county. "It's like going back in time," she told the Times.

Mississippi requires voters designated "inactive" to cast provisional ballots, a rule NPR cited as one possible reason for the state's high affidavit rate.

"Mississippi is not a model of election administration," Michael Morse, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who studies voting, told NPR. "I cannot tell you basic things," he told NPR.

Secretary of State Michael Watson defended the process on X, writing that "the extra few minutes it may take to vote via affidavit ballot are well worth the election integrity added by having cleaner voter rolls."

Mississippi last elected a Democratic senator in 1982, when segregationist John Stennis won. Hyde-Smith, 67, entered the Senate in 2018.

In April 2023, she declined to support then-President Joe Biden's federal judgeship nomination of Colom, a district attorney, citing questions about his positions on transgender issues and other concerns. Republican Sen. Roger Wicker backed Colom, but Hyde-Smith's opposition prevented his confirmation under the Senate's blue slip tradition.

Colom, 43, took his campaign to all 82 counties. His team made a viral attack ad from Hyde-Smith's earlier remark to voters concerned about beef prices, "you have so many proteins to choose from." Her campaign portrayed Colom as a puppet of billionaire liberal donor George Soros, whose family has helped fund his campaigns.

Early exit polls cited by BBC News show that Black voters in Mississippi gave Democrats 91% of their votes. "I really feel like a change is what we need," Jamyria Dunn, an 18-year-old Jackson State University student, told BBC News.

"It always seems, no matter who's in office, there's a spike in gas prices," Travis Powe, a 29-year-old logger in Brookhaven who voted for Hyde-Smith, told BBC News.

CBS News reported that Mississippi does not permit recounts, while AFP reported that there is no automatic recount but candidates may seek court intervention. Counties must certify their results by Friday.