Nearly a Million Mississippians Voted — and at Dawn, Just 43 Votes Separated the Senator From the Man She Once Blocked

Shortly before 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith walked out to a ballroom full of supporters at a hotel in Flowood, Mississippi, and came within a sentence of declaring victory.

“This is a much longer night than we thought it would be,” she told the crowd, according to Mississippi Today. “But we’re in a good lead right now.” She gave the other side its due — “the Democrats got out and worked, they really got out and worked” — and then delivered the line her supporters had come to hear: “But not enough of them. I’ll just tell you that right now. I assure you I will continue to be your U.S. senator.”

Across the Pearl River, at the Ice House in downtown Jackson, her challenger was hugging people and telling them something very different.

By sunrise on Wednesday, nearly a million Mississippians had cast a ballot in their U.S. Senate race. And in The Associated Press count, the two leading candidates were separated by 43 votes.

That is not a typo. It is fewer people than fit on a school bus, in a state Donald Trump carried by 24 points just two years ago, in a race most forecasters had written off as safely Republican. And the man holding that sliver of a lead has an unusual history with the senator he is trying to unseat, one that began years before either of them knew they would meet on a ballot.

A “Safe” Seat on the Worst Night in Years

Tuesday was a brutal night for Republicans. Democrats won both the House and the Senate, flipping Senate seats in states that hadn’t sent a Democrat to Washington in decades. James Talarico beat Ken Paxton in Texas. Adam Hamilton ousted Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas. In Maine, Susan Collins lost.

Mississippi was supposed to be the firewall. Yet as the returns came in, Democrat Scott Colom — a district attorney from Columbus in north Mississippi — kept outperforming recent Democrats in county after county, Mississippi Today reported.

Even Republicans noticed. Former Gov. Haley Barbour, walking into Hyde-Smith’s party before the first results posted, reflected on Trump’s 24-point win in 2024. “He isn’t winning by 24 points today,” Barbour said.

Hyde-Smith led for most of the night. Then, shortly after midnight, late returns arrived from Hinds County, home to Jackson, and from majority-Black counties in the Delta and southwest Mississippi. In Hinds alone, Colom piled up 61,793 votes to Hyde-Smith’s 14,702, according to The Mississippi Independent. He even led in DeSoto County, the Memphis-area county Trump won by 24 points in 2024.

At midnight, Colom was ahead by 28 votes, the Mississippi Free Press reported. A few hours later, it was 43: 462,821 for Colom, 462,778 for Hyde-Smith, with independent Ty Pinkins drawing 19,935 votes — about 2% — in a race where every one of them now looks enormous.

Why Nobody Can Call It Yet

As of Wednesday morning, the AP had not declared a winner, and NBC News still listed the race as too close to call. Decision Desk HQ, using a different tally, put Colom ahead by a little over 2,000 votes, The Hill reported — still well under a single percentage point.

The reason is what’s left to count. Hinds County paused its tally shortly after midnight and planned to resume Wednesday morning. And across the state sit thousands of affidavit ballots — provisional ballots cast when a voter’s eligibility is questioned, when someone shows up without an acceptable photo ID or at the wrong precinct. Colom’s campaign estimated there are 10,000 to 15,000 of them. The Hyde-Smith campaign says its own numbers show she will win.

They won’t be settled quickly. A voter who cast an affidavit ballot for lack of photo ID can still have it counted by showing ID at the clerk’s office within five business days, the Sun Herald reported, citing the secretary of state.

Two more rules raise the stakes. There is no runoff: in a federal general election, whoever finishes first wins, even with less than 50%. And there is no automatic recount, however close it gets. In Mississippi, a recount happens only if a court orders one.

“This is not over,” Colom’s campaign manager, Gerard Henderson, told the crowd in Jackson. “We’re going to fight til the end.”

The Decision She Made in 2023

Here is the part most people outside Mississippi don’t know: Scott Colom was never supposed to be running for the Senate. He was supposed to be a federal judge.

In October 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Support came from across the aisle: Sen. Roger Wicker, Rep. Trent Kelly and former Govs. Phil Bryant and Haley Barbour — the same Barbour who was at Hyde-Smith’s party on Tuesday night — all backed his consideration, The Dispatch in Columbus reported.

One signature was missing. In April 2023, Hyde-Smith announced she would not return her “blue slip,” the home-state senator’s sign-off that district court nominees traditionally need before they get a hearing, Roll Call reported. She cited “Scott Colom’s opposition to legislation to protect female athletes” and the backing his first DA campaign got from a PAC funded by billionaire George Soros. “I simply cannot support his nomination to serve on the federal bench in Mississippi for a lifetime,” she said.

The nomination died without a hearing. “It just did not seem to matter how much local (or state) support I had. It was only D.C. politics,” Colom told The Dispatch in January 2025. “I believe God has a mission and vision for my life,” he added. “Through failure he’s teaching me things.”

Eight months later, he announced he was running for the Senate — against her. Hyde-Smith herself, as the Mississippi Free Press put it this week, had left him free to run.

A Name Mississippi Hasn’t Seen Since 1881

Colom, a Columbus native, has made history before: in 2015 he unseated longtime District Attorney Forrest Allgood to become the 16th Circuit’s first Black DA.

If his lead holds, the history gets much bigger. He would be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Mississippi since John Stennis in 1982. And he would be the first Black U.S. senator from Mississippi since Blanche K. Bruce, who served during Reconstruction and left office in 1881.

Hyde-Smith, appointed in 2018 to replace the retiring Thad Cochran, is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress. She kept the seat that year in a runoff against Mike Espy, a Black Democrat, that was overshadowed by her remark that if a supporter invited her to a “public hanging,” she’d “be on the front row.”

On Tuesday night, Colom stopped short of formally claiming victory, too. But he left little doubt about what he believed.

“I’m telling you, deep down in my soul,” he told his supporters, according to WLOX, “I believe we’re about to show the country Mississippi matters.”

Now the counting goes on — and in Mississippi, the ballots that decide it may be the ones still sitting in a clerk’s office, waiting for a voter to walk in with an ID.