Local elections officials continued Thursday to process thousands of absentee and affidavit ballots as the nation waited to see who would win Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race.
The razor-thin margin between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom has already shocked many across the country, but it remained too close to be decided Thursday. Colom led with 1,764 votes and nearly a million votes cast.
A likely legal battle over the count also continued Thursday.
Colom’s campaign said he was clearly on track to win, and the voting rights organization Fair Fight said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic election lawyers Elias Law Group deployed hundreds of volunteers and local attorneys to all 82 counties to oversee the final rounds of counting.
LIVE: 2026 Mississippi Election Results
The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a letter (PDF) Thursday to county election commissioners and precinct clerks in Mississippi, demanding that they segregate and preserve all cast affidavit ballots.
“As the democratic process continues to unfold, we are committed to ensuring that every legal ballot is counted accurately and that the voices of all Mississippians are heard,” said Samantha Cantrell, NRSC regional press secretary.
The letter demands that election officials maintain a wide range of records, pointing to future litigation.
The state Republican Party was scheduled to speak to reporters at a news conference in Jackson later Thursday.
How many votes are left to count?
Secretary of State Michael Watson said Wednesday that 3,600 mail-in ballots could be processed, although in reality not all of those ballots will reach local election officials by the statutory deadline of Nov. 10.
Between 14,000 and 18,000 affidavit ballots remain outstanding statewide, according to Lisa Ross, a local voting rights attorney who is leading efforts to monitor election workers processing the remaining ballots.
Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Mike Hurst told reporters Thursday afternoon that Republicans believe there could be as many as 20,000 outstanding ballots, including mail-in, absentee and absentee ballots. He said the election is not over and Republicans are deploying resources across the state.
Election lawyers, voting rights advocates and national journalists descended on Mississippi over the past 48 hours, scrambling to understand what ballots remained, when they would be counted and how Colom came within a whisker of eking out a victory in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in decades.
At a breakfast in Jackson Thursday morning, Colom greeted a crowd of cheering volunteers and said he had little doubt the race was headed his way.
“Anyone who does an analysis knows where this is going. The affidavit (vote) is still moving in favor of the Democrats in Mississippi,” Colom said. “You look at the remaining ballots, it’s going in our favor, absolutely.”
Spokespeople for Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not immediately comment Thursday on that figure.
The Associated Press showed that about 10% of votes were uncounted in Hinds County, the state’s most populous region and a Democratic stronghold. Hinds County election officials said they expect it will take several days to review the remaining ballots, most of which are absentee and affidavit ballots.
Ballots also remained uncounted in areas along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Rankin County’s suburb of Jackson, two areas won by Hyde-Smith.
Colom did not speculate on how long it would take for the remaining ballots to be counted, but expressed confidence that “Mississippi has decided to go in a new direction.”
“I’m proud of the lawyers that we have, the organizers that we have that are on the ground making sure that the law is followed and that you know that we are doing what we can,” Colom said. “I’m very excited about where we are.”
Election lawyers arrive in Mississippi
Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight, said in a statement that “Mississippians showed up in historic numbers” and that the organization would work to “defend the will of the people.”
“Right now, Scott Colom is in the lead, and we are confident that when the votes are counted, he will be the next U.S. senator from Mississippi.”
Semafor Congressional Reporter Nicholas Wu reported Thursday that the political arm of the U.S. House Black Caucus is “aggressively fundraising for recounts in Mississippi” and a congressional race in North Carolina.
Mississippi does not have an automatic recount law. A recount would only take place if a court ordered it. For this to happen, a campaign or political party would have to file a lawsuit against a county or county election commission.
A state judge would likely hear the case on an expedited basis and the lower court’s decision could be appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Once election results are certified, campaigns can conduct reviews of the ballot boxes, which can be used as evidence in a trial. The dispute over the acceptance and rejection of affidavit ballots would likely go to litigation.
If a court battle ensues, the process could be disjointed and chaotic. Mississippi law does not establish a statewide ballot challenge system, only on a county-by-county basis.
How Democrat Colom beat a Republican senator
The razor-thin margin has national experts wondering how a Democrat is poised to handle a stunning upset in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat in more than four decades or elected a Black to the House since Reconstruction.
Colom managed to break the GOP’s iron grip on the state by turning out large numbers of black voters, flipping several crucial counties blue and convincing Republicans to cross over and vote for him.
The most surprising feat was that Colom won DeSoto County, a reliable Republican stronghold in a Memphis suburb, by seven percentage points, something Democrats would have considered unthinkable last year.
In 2020, Hyde-Smith won the county with 56% of the vote, while Democrat Mike Espy received 40%. Today, Colom bucked the trend and won the county at 51%, while Hyde-Smith trailed at 45%.
Colom also mitigated his losses in Harrison County, a populous coastal county that has flooded statewide Democratic candidates over the past decade and become a red light for the state Republican Party.
In 2020, Hyde-Smith beat Espy in Harrison County by 17 percentage points. This year, only four percentage points separate Hyde-Smith and Colom.
The Democratic candidate also managed to flip Lafayette and Madison counties, two wealthy, majority-white regions of the state that have become swing areas in recent elections. Brandon Presley, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2023, lost both of those areas, but Colom narrowly won them.
Colom said he significantly outperformed a “generic Democrat” in counties across the state and believed Hyde-Smith’s negative ads backfired because he visited so many voters in person.
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