Scott Colom leads Cindy Hyde-Smith as Mississippi votes remain uncounted

Colom would become Mississippi’s first Black senator in over 140 years

BBC News reported that Democrat Scott Colom held a lead of about 2,500 ballots, less than 1%, over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith as Mississippi officials continued counting votes nearly a week after the U.S. midterm elections. Thousands of postal and affidavit ballots remained uncounted, and state law set Friday as the deadline to certify results. A Colom victory would make the local prosecutor Mississippi’s first Black senator in more than 140 years and the state’s first Democratic senator in nearly four decades.

The unsettled count carries consequences beyond the roughly 2,500-ballot margin. A win would expand the Democratic Senate majority-elect to 55 seats, with a knife-edge race in Alaska still uncalled, and add to a string of Democratic successes nationally, including a landslide majority in the House of Representatives. It would also end a Republican winning streak in Mississippi dating to 1982.

State law sets Friday as the certification deadline, but thousands of postal and affidavit ballots remain uncounted. Affidavit ballots are those not immediately accepted because of a discrepancy such as lacking proper identification on election day. Voters in those cases fill out a provisional ballot and return to resolve the issue; the deadline for both affidavit and mail-in ballots is Tuesday.

State officials estimate between 12,000 and 20,000 affidavit ballots were cast, and roughly 15,500 had been processed by Tuesday morning. BBC News reported that the difference could be enough to swing the race. Each party has sent teams of lawyers into Mississippi, setting up the possibility of legal challenges over the result.

The race was never expected to be this close. Colom appeared to be riding a national wave of resentment against Republicans after the party suffered defeats in typically conservative strongholds including Texas, Kansas and Iowa. His lead was especially narrow in a conservative state Donald Trump won by over 22 points in 2024.

BBC News cited exit polls indicating that voter backlash against Trump’s Republican party was driven in large part by economic woes that voters blamed on his administration’s tariffs and war with Iran. Colom, a local prosecutor, highlighted Hyde-Smith’s support for Trump’s tariffs and gave her the nickname “Cindy High Prices.” Trump flew into the state last month to campaign for Hyde-Smith. Colom campaigned aggressively, visiting all 82 Mississippi counties.

Hyde-Smith’s campaign assailed Colom as a puppet of billionaire liberal donor George Soros, whose family has helped fund Colom’s political campaigns. Her opponents criticized her for a lack of public appearances. Democrats accused her of insensitivity after she told voters worried about the price of beef that “you have so many proteins to choose from.” The Colom team turned the remark into a viral attack advertisement.

BBC News reported that the race also became competitive because of Mississippi’s large Black population, whose members were expected to turn out in record numbers. Early exit polls showed Black voters, who historically vote Democratic, drifting even further to the left and giving 91% of their votes to Democrats.

At Jackson State University, a historically Black college in Mississippi, many of the students interviewed by the BBC said they were voting for the first time. All of them said they had cast their ballots for Colom. “I really feel like a change is what we need,” 18-year-old Jamyria Dunn said. “I’ve had some amazing days in my life,” she continued, “but seeing Mississippi, this state in particular, turn blue, would really bring a light to my heart that people just would not understand.”

Dunn’s friend Journey Moore told the BBC how excited she would be if Colom won and left his mark on African-American history. “On a scale of one to 10, it’s definitely 1,000,” Moore said. “I’m witnessing it, and I’m a part of it. It’s pretty great.”

In Brookhaven, in Lincoln County, where Hyde-Smith was born and Trump won 72% of the votes two years ago, party loyalty was on stark display. Everyone the BBC interviewed said they either did not vote or voted for Hyde-Smith. No one denied that the cost of living had gone up, but few blamed Trump or Hyde-Smith. Travis Powe, a 29-year-old logger who voted for Hyde-Smith, said: “It always seems, no matter who’s in office, there’s a spike in gas prices. There’s always a war. Things are always going up and down.”

Keith Scott, a Trump supporter, said both parties had been “attacking Trump at all angles,” which was why he voted for him. He said the race was unexpectedly close because the president had not delivered during his second term. “Trump and his administration did not hold up what they ran on. Bottom line,” Scott said. “And the people like me that voted for him the first two times, that saw the benefits in his first term, we’ve seen none of it in his second.”

Another lifelong Republican, Lee Barry, discussed the effects of gas and grocery prices. “The price on gas is really high, so that cuts into your pocket,” Barry said. “And then you go into the grocery store, prices are high. You get your shopping cart, and you got five things in it, and it’s 100 bucks before you get out of there. So, I think that hurt her a good bit,” he said about Hyde-Smith. Barry also said she “should have been out a little bit more” on the campaign trail.

The latest tally had not declared a winner. With certification set for Friday and legal teams from both parties in Mississippi, the outcome turned on whether the remaining count erased Colom’s less-than-1% advantage.