Scott Colom led Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 2,574 votes in Mississippi’s Senate race on Monday, according to the unofficial count reported by the Associated Press. On Election Day his lead was 65. It has grown almost every day since, as county clerks have opened the ballots that were set aside.
If it holds, Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney from Columbus, would be the first Black person Mississippi has sent to the Senate since Reconstruction, from the state with the largest Black share of any in the country. It would also make him the first Democrat the state has elected to the Senate since John Stennis won in 1982.
The race has not been called. About 97% of the vote is counted. Roughly 2,700 absentee mail-in ballots are still outstanding, and Mississippi officials had processed 14,239 affidavit ballots, with about 77% of them accepted, according to WLBT in Jackson. Mail ballots must arrive by Tuesday, and voters who cast affidavit ballots have until 5 p.m. Tuesday to validate them. County clerks must certify results by Friday, Nov. 13.
Those affidavit ballots are where the count has moved. A voter gets one when a poll worker cannot confirm eligibility or the voter cannot show the photo ID Mississippi requires, and it counts only if the voter later clears the problem. The Mississippi Free Press reported that in Lafayette County they broke for Colom 69% to 29%, and that he outperformed in affidavit ballots in several north Mississippi counties, including ones friendly to Hyde-Smith. Colom’s campaign has said it expects the lead to keep growing.
Both campaigns have sent lawyers to the state. Mississippi has no automatic recount. A court can order one, and either side can challenge ballots in court after certification, so the next week may be decided as much by judges as by clerks.
Hyde-Smith has not said she will concede. MS NOW reported that she has not been seen in public since leaving her election night watch party on Tuesday.
Colom did not win on Black votes alone, and the numbers say so. Ole Miss political scientist Marvin King said the state saw “a significant number of split-ticket voters, more than we normally see, so the lesson there is you can’t take your voters for granted.” Yahoo News reported Colom ran 19 points better among white voters than the 2024 Democratic nominee. But a seat this close was always going to depend on whether Black voters’ ballots were counted, and in Mississippi those are the ballots that most often arrive with a question mark attached.
That is the standard to hold the state to this week. Every valid ballot gets counted, the affidavit cure window stays open until 5 p.m. Tuesday, and no court is asked to throw out votes that clerks have already accepted. A margin of 2,574 in a state of about a million ballots is small, and it is real.
The first deadline is 5 p.m. Tuesday. The certified result is due Friday.
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