How Scott Colom turned his Mississippi Senate race into a nailbiter

Democrat Scott Colom and Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith are locked in a razor-thin Mississippi Senate race. As of Friday afternoon, Colom held a lead of a little over 2,000 votes with approximately 96% of ballots counted, according to Free Malaysia Today and Axios. Before polls closed on Tuesday, Decision Desk HQ gave Hyde-Smith a 91 percent chance of winning.

The prolonged count is attributed to Mississippi's election procedures, which allow officials several days to process mail-in and provisional ballots, according to Free Malaysia Today. NPR noted that the state's process is among the slowest and most decentralized in the U.S. Secretary of State Michael Watson reported that roughly 3,300 absentee ballots remained outstanding, while WDAM-7 estimated that between 12,000 and 20,000 provisional affidavit ballots remain uncounted.

Axios reported that the close contest has drawn scrutiny toward voter-roll maintenance after some voters experienced issues casting ballots. An analysis by Mississippi Today showed that more than 230,000 Mississippians were listed as inactive ahead of the midterms, an increase from roughly 166,000 in the 2024 election. These inactive voters were required to cast affidavit ballots, which election workers must review against registration records.

Brief written by urgent.news from The Hill, Hindustan Times - World News, Free Malaysia Today, Axios, NPR — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.