Whereas razor-thin election margins in American politics usually spark anticipation of recounts, there isn’t any such course of in place in Mississippi, the place the Senate race is presently inside a margin of some dozen votes as of Wednesday morning.
Because the Democratic challenger Scott Colom and incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith stay neck-and-neck with 96% of the anticipated vote in, Mississippi’s Secretary of State Workplace confirmed to ABC Information that the state has no formal recount course of.
In keeping with the secretary of state’s workplace, candidates can not request a recount, and a recount can’t be robotically triggered in Mississippi.
The workplace did share, nonetheless, {that a} candidate can carry out “a poll field examination” and study poll supplies after the election is licensed. In the event that they see points, they’ll file a authorized problem, the workplace mentioned.
As of Wednesday morning, Colom and Hyde-Smith each had 48.9% of the vote, whereas Impartial challenger Ty Pinkins held 2% of the vote with 96% of the anticipated vote reporting.
Democratic US Senate candidate Scott Colom in Jackson, Mississippi, Nov. 3, 2026 and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Washington, March 28, 2024.
Reuters/AP
Colom, with 462,857 votes, had 65 extra votes than Hyde-Smith, with 462,792. Pinkins had 19,938 votes.
Mississippi permits mail ballots to reach as much as 5 enterprise days after the election, according to the Secretary of State’s workplace, which units that day as Nov. 10, 2026. Nonetheless, the ballots needed to be postmarked on or earlier than Election Day.
It’s attainable there are mail ballots or provisional ballots — known as “affidavit ballots” in Mississippi, which allow a resident to vote even when their handle can’t be discovered within the ballot e book at their precinct– nonetheless left to be counted, though it’s unclear what number of there could also be.
Colom’s marketing campaign supervisor said on Tuesday night that the marketing campaign thinks there might be round 15,000 provisional ballots left to be counted; the workplace of the Mississippi Secretary of State advised ABC Information there isn’t any definitive quantity they may give.
The certification deadline is Nov. 13.
The slim margin comes as a shock in deep-red Mississippi, which voted for President Donald Trump with 61% of the vote in 2024 and elected Hyde-Smith to the Senate with 54% of the vote in 2020, two years after she took workplace by appointment in 2018.
Colom is a district lawyer for 4 counties alongside the Mississippi-Alabama border and a former nominee to turn out to be a U.S. district choose. He can be Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982.
President Donald Trump rallied with Hyde-Smith final month, making an attempt to shore up help for the incumbent candidate earlier than the election.
“My opponent, Scott Colom, is essentially the most radical Senate candidate to run for Mississippi, actually, in our lifetimes,” Hyde-Smith mentioned, talking forward of Trump on the rally.
Colom, talking at a press convention forward of the rally, mentioned, “A whole lot of people ain’t gonna be capable of make this rally as a result of they cannot afford the fuel to rise up right here.”
