Mississippi Senate Count: Colom Leads Hyde-Smith by 2,536 Votes in the State's Own Tally as Tuesday's Ballot Deadline Arrives

A week after Election Day, the closest Senate race in the country has a new official-source number. Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson released updated figures Monday afternoon from the Statewide Election Management System showing Democrat Scott Colom with 467,961 votes and Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith with 465,425 - a lead of 2,536 votes for Colom, with the race still too close to call.

The release is the state's own running tally rather than a news organization's count. Seventy-five of Mississippi's 82 counties had uploaded their unofficial results into the system by 5 p.m. Monday, and election workers have now checked 14,239 affidavit ballots - the provisional envelopes that have driven the count since election night, when Colom's lead stood at just a few dozen votes. The results remain unofficial until the counties certify them.

Tuesday, November 10, is the deadline the remaining ballots have been racing: it is the last day eligible absentee ballots can arrive to be counted - Mississippi counts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day if they are received within five business days, a law the Supreme Court upheld in June - and the last day for voters whose affidavit ballots raised identification questions to resolve them.

What comes next is certification. All 82 counties must send their certified results to Watson's office by Friday, November 13. Mississippi law provides no automatic statewide recount, so once the certified numbers are in, any further fight over a margin this small would have to run through the courts or the Senate itself. Until then, the seat Hyde-Smith has held since 2018 rests on a lead of 2,536 votes out of more than 933,000 counted - and on whatever arrives in Tuesday's mail.