WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press on Wednesday declared Democrat Scott Colom the winner in the race forU.S. Senate in Mississippiafter several counties reportedupdated results— including provisional ballots that are typically among the last to be counted.
Colom led Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes following the final election night update in Mississippi, which arrived at 3:03 a.m. ET Nov. 4 from Pike County. Not only has Colom’s lead grown larger as counties in Mississippi have completed their vote count and reported on the outcome of their review of provisional ballots in the days since, but he’s won the vast majority of these final updates — in every region of the state and in all but the most Republican counties — by a large margin. He won all 12 vote updates released by various counties throughout the state Wednesday.
The AP called the race for the Colom just before 6 p.m. ET Wednesday after officials in Jackson County updated their vote count with an additional 2,173 votes. The update put Colom up by 4,669 votes out of 962,237 counted, or 0.5 percentage points.
To come back and take the lead, Hyde-Smith needed to win these final vote updates in Republican-leaning counties such as Jackson. Instead, Colom won the update in Jackson by just over 1 percentage point.
Colom’s victory was powered by his strong showing the the heavily Democratic Jackson and Delta areas. He leads there with more than 67% of the vote, the strongest performance in that region of any Democratic candidate for Senate, governor or president going back at least 10 years. He also was competitive in the Republican-friendly Northeast and Southeast, where Hyde-Smith trailed President Donald Trump’s 2024 vote share by more than 10 percentage points.
The AP estimates there are fewer than 12,000 votes remaining for county election officials in Mississippi to review before the deadline Friday for counties to certify their election results. Many of those votes left to count are provisional ballots, which are called affidavit ballots in Mississippi, and a good number may not ultimately be counted once they are reviewed and assessed by election officials.
There is no recount law in Mississippi: Hyde-Smith would need to persuade a court to order a review of the election. She conceded the raceWednesday in a social media video after the AP called the race for Colom.
There have been about 40 recounts in statewide elections since 2000. Only three have resulted in a new winner and all three were decided by hundreds of votes, not thousands. There is no precedent this century for a recount overturning an election with a margin as wide as the one in Mississippi.
Colom’s victory will give Democrats 55 Senate seats in the new Congress, a net gain of eight seats. It’s the party’s largest midterm gain in the chamber since 1986, when Democrats also picked up eight Senate seats in President Ronald Reagan’s second term.
The last time Democrats held 55 Senate seats was in 2014, before losing the majority in that year’s midterms.