Four days after election day, Mississippi’s Senate race remains the closest in the country and still uncalled. Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney, leads incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde Smith by fewer than 2,000 votes, 1,936 after Bolivar County added 184 votes for Colom and 61 for Hyde Smith on Friday morning, leaving Colom on 49.1 percent statewide to 48.8 percent. About 96 to 97 percent of votes have been counted. Independent Ty Pinkins, who said he aimed to draw votes from Hyde Smith and lift Colom, took a small share, including five of the 503 affidavit ballots processed in Oktibbeha County.
The outstanding vote is the story. Mississippi voters whose registration or identification is questioned at the polls vote by affidavit ballot, and the count of those ballots is unusually large this year because more than 230,000 Mississippians were listed as inactive on the rolls before election day, up from about 166,000 in 2024, after the secretary of state’s office used third party address data. Nobody in authority will state how many affidavit ballots remain: estimates from the parties run from about 10,000 to about 20,000. Secretary of State Michael Watson put outstanding mail ballots at about 3,300 to 3,600. Counties that have reported affidavit results so far, including Oktibbeha, where Colom took affidavit ballots by 401 votes to 96, and Lafayette, have shown Colom winning affidavit ballots by wider margins than his overall vote.
Both campaigns are lawyering the count. Hyde Smith’s attorneys wrote to election officials in all 82 counties demanding that affidavit ballots and their paperwork be segregated and preserved, and the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm demanded that officials preserve affidavit ballots, a step this site noted on November 6. Colom’s side argues affidavit voters lean Democratic. Mississippi has no automatic recount procedure, so a dispute after certification would go to court.
The calendar is fixed even if the margin is not. Mail ballots postmarked by election day can arrive through Tuesday, November 10, which is also the deadline for affidavit voters to cure identification problems. Counties must certify results by Friday, November 13. Until those two dates pass, the correct description of this race is the one every tally supports: uncalled, with a Democratic challenger ahead by a margin smaller than the pool of ballots nobody can yet count.