Mississippi Senate: Scott Colom lead over Hyde-Smith pops to more than 4,400 votes

Democratic nominee Scott Colom on Wednesday significantly expanded his lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Mississippi Senate election to more than 4,400 votes as the ballot count continued.

When the day began, Colom had a 2,990-vote lead over Hyde-Smith.

That spread ticked upward slowly until just after 2 p.m. ET when a surge of newly counted ballots boosted his tally by 607 votes, and then soon after by another 621 votes.

As of 2:30 p.m., Colom was ahead of Hyde-Smith by 4,404 votes, according to the Associated Press.

With an estimated 99% of the votes in, Colom led Hyde-Smith by 49.18% to 48.72%. Independent candidate Ty Pinkins had 2.1% of the vote.

Colom has steadily expanded his lead over Hyde-Smith for days as he has won a higher share of so-called affidavit ballots than he received in ballots counted on Election Day night. Affidavit ballots are cast by voters on a provisional basis if there is a question about the voter’s eligibility.

The AP estimates that fewer than 15,000 ballots are left to be processed.

Colom was boosted by newly counted votes from Hinds County, the second-most populous county in Mississippi, which encompasses the capital of Jackson.

Most of the county’s residents are, like Colom, Black.

If Colom is elected, he would be the first Black senator from Mississippi since the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War.

In 2024, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris defeated President Donald Trump by 46 percentage points in Hinds County. As of Wednesday morning, Colom was winning 80% of the vote in the county, with just 19% for Hyde-Smith.

Mississippi, which has not elected a Democratic senator since the segregationist John Stennis in 1982, was on the radar of few, if any, political analysts as a possible pickup for Democrats.

Tuesday was the deadline for resolving affidavit ballots. It is also the deadline for the receipt of mail-in absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3.

Mississippi is one of just two states whose Senate election has not been called. Alaska is the other.

Democrats so far have flipped seven Senate seats held by Republicans going into the election. That gives Democrats a new majority in the Senate of at least 54 seats in the 100-member chamber come January.

Alaska before Election Day was viewed as possibly key to the question of whether Republicans would retain their narrow majority in the Senate.

In Alaska, Democratic nominee Mary Peltola’s lead extended to 4,250 votes over incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, with 84% of the total votes counted, a margin of 1.8 percentage points.

Peltola has 49% of the total vote.

If neither she nor Sullivan gets more than 50% of the total vote, the race will go to a ranked-choice round, in which the two other candidates, Gerald Heikes and another candidate named Dan Sullivan, will be eliminated, and the second choices of voters who made them their first choice will be allocated between Peltola and the incumbent.