Four days after Election Day, Mississippi's U.S. Senate race is still uncalled — but it is no longer the coin-flip it was on election night. Democrat Scott Colom led Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by 2,574 votes in the Associated Press tally as of Friday afternoon, 467,930 votes (49.1 percent) to 465,356 (48.8 percent), out of 953,314 votes counted with an estimated 97 percent of the vote in. Independent Ty Pinkins holds most of the remainder, just over 2 percent.

This is an update to a count Awaaz Punjab has tracked since Tuesday night, when the two candidates were separated by just 28 votes. Colom's lead grew to 1,138 votes in the count we reported on November 4, passed 2,000 on Friday morning — 467,066 to 465,056 in AP's 11:36 a.m. update — and reached 2,574 by Friday at 5 p.m. as affidavit ballots, Mississippi's provisional ballots, began to be reported county by county. The direction of the late count matters more than its size: Hyde-Smith needed the remaining ballots to break her way, and so far they have broken Colom's.

Affidavit ballots are breaking for Colom

The clearest window into the late count came from Oktibbeha County, home to Mississippi State University, which released its affidavit results on Friday. Of 503 affidavit ballots processed, Colom received 401, Hyde-Smith 96 and Pinkins five — an 80-to-19 percent split, well beyond Colom's 60-to-38.9 percent margin in the county's regular ballots, in a county that voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. The Mississippi Free Press reported that counties reporting affidavit results so far have consistently shown Colom outperforming his overall margins in those ballots. The biggest single block still outstanding sits in Hinds County, home to the capital, Jackson, where Colom leads the overall vote 79 percent to 19 percent; Hinds officials are still counting affidavit ballots and have released no figures.

How the remaining ballots work

Mississippi voters who cannot be confirmed at the polls vote by affidavit ballot, and county officials then check identification and registration before deciding which ballots count — a process running across all 82 counties in public view, as state law requires counting to be held in full view of the public. Secretary of State Michael Watson has said roughly 3,600 mailed absentee ballots had not been returned; ballots postmarked by Election Day, November 3, can still be counted if they arrive by Tuesday, November 10, which is also the deadline for voters who lacked ID at the polls to show it to their circuit clerk and cure their affidavit ballot.

In Rankin County, a Republican-leaning county outside Jackson whose ballots Hyde-Smith needs, election commissioners said they would work through the weekend curing affidavit ballots and expected to begin scanning them at about 5 p.m. on Tuesday in Brandon. District 2 Election Commissioner Andrew Sorrentino told the Mississippi Free Press that about 20 percent of affidavit ballots processed there so far had been rejected, that voting at the wrong precinct accounts for just over half of those rejections — and that Mississippi offers no cure for a wrong-precinct ballot. "A lot of times I think the public thinks that an affidavit ballot is going to self-correct itself once it gets into our office," Sorrentino said. "We don't." Late registration and missing signatures account for much of the rest.

Colom, the district attorney for Mississippi's 16th District and a Millsaps College graduate who visited his alma mater on Wednesday, spent Friday at Marshall's Bookstore in Jackson talking about what kind of senator he intends to be if the lead holds. "I want to show that I'm gonna be very ethical," he said, adding that he wants the next young Black boy or girl with the same ambition to be judged "by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin." At the State Capitol on Friday, voting-rights groups including the Mississippi Center for Justice and the Mississippi Poor People's Campaign pressed counties to keep the count transparent. "These are not just ballots. They are people's voices, and we should not be silenced behind a closed door," said Emilee Shell, a tri-chair of the Mississippi Poor People's Campaign. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Chief Ben Cyrus separately praised what he called a significant increase in tribal voter turnout.

What happens next

The calendar is now fixed. Absentee ballots and ID cures close on Tuesday, November 10; counties must certify their results and send them to the secretary of state by Friday, November 13; and the secretary of state is expected to declare the final outcome at the start of December. Mississippi law provides no automatic recount and no route for a candidate to request one, so any challenge to the certified result would have to go to court. Control of the U.S. Senate is not at stake in this race — Democrats have already secured at least 54 seats and both chambers of Congress in Tuesday's midterms — which is why this last uncalled Southern Senate race is being fought over the count itself, ballot by ballot, rather than over the balance of power in Washington.