With thousands of provisional ballots still under review, outstanding mail-in votes and seven counties yet to upload updated unofficial results, Mississippi’s Senate election remains unresolved six days after Election Day.
- Mississippi Senate election results: Latest figures
- How many votes are still outstanding?
- Which counties matter most?
- Why are affidavit ballots taking so long?
- November 10 and November 13: The two key deadlines
- Could the result face a legal challenge?
- Why this election matters beyond Mississippi
- What happens next?
- Sources
Updated: November 9, 2026
Six days after Americans voted in the 2026 midterm elections, Mississippi remains one of the last unresolved U.S. Senate contests. Democrat Scott Colom holds a narrow lead over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, but outstanding ballots and approaching certification deadlines mean neither candidate has been declared the winner.
According to the latest Associated Press figures available for this report, Colom leads by 2,574 votes, with approximately 97% of the estimated vote counted.
Mississippi Senate election results: Latest figures
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scott Colom | Democratic | 467,930 | 49.08% |
| Cindy Hyde-Smith | Republican | 465,356 | 48.81% |
| Ty Pinkins | Independent | 20,028 | 2.10% |
Current margin: Colom +2,574 votes
These are unofficial results. Because voting data continues to arrive from individual counties, different election reporting services may display slightly different totals at the same time.
How many votes are still outstanding?
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson provided an important update on November 8 and additional clarification on Monday.
According to Watson, 75 of the state’s 82 counties had uploaded updated unofficial results to the statewide election system.
Election officials had processed 12,767 affidavit ballots, accepting approximately 77% of them — roughly 9,830 ballots.
On Monday, Watson estimated that approximately 8,000 affidavit ballots still required processing, alongside more than 2,800 outstanding mail-in absentee ballots.
These figures should not be interpreted as an exact total of votes guaranteed to enter the final count. Some affidavit ballots will be rejected after eligibility checks, while some outstanding absentee ballots may never arrive or qualify.
Nor is it clear that every already accepted ballot has been incorporated into the Associated Press totals.
The distinction matters: the number of ballots awaiting processing is not necessarily the same as the number of votes that could still change the publicly reported result.
Which counties matter most?
The remaining votes are not evenly distributed across Mississippi.
Hinds County, home to the state capital, Jackson, is one of the most significant areas still processing ballots. Colom has received approximately 80% of the county’s reported Senate vote, compared with about 19% for Hyde-Smith.
Nearby Holmes County is another strongly Democratic area where additional ballots have been identified as outstanding.
Other counties also have substantial affidavit ballot workloads.
Earlier county-level reports identified approximately 2,100 affidavit ballots awaiting review in DeSoto County, 1,931 in Madison County and 1,667 in Rankin County. These figures were reported before the latest statewide update and should not be treated as confirmed remaining balances on November 9.
Rankin County favors Hyde-Smith, while Colom leads in DeSoto and narrowly in Madison.
This geographic distribution makes county-by-county reporting essential. The number of remaining ballots alone cannot establish how the final margin will change.
Why are affidavit ballots taking so long?
Mississippi uses affidavit ballots, commonly known elsewhere as provisional ballots, when a voter’s eligibility cannot immediately be verified.
This can occur when a voter lacks acceptable photo identification, appears as inactive on the registration rolls or encounters another eligibility question at the polling place.
Election commissions must examine the relevant records and determine which ballots qualify.
Voters who submitted affidavit ballots because they lacked acceptable photo identification have until November 10 to provide the required documentation.
The unusually high number of these ballots has added complexity to an election decided so far by only a few thousand votes.
November 10 and November 13: The two key deadlines
Tuesday, November 10, is a critical deadline for accepting mail-in absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and for completing certain voter identification procedures.
Additional county-level vote totals may become available as officials finish processing outstanding ballots.
Friday, November 13, is the deadline for Mississippi’s 82 counties to certify their election results.
Certification could establish the winner, but a legal challenge could delay final resolution.
Could the result face a legal challenge?
Both campaigns and their legal representatives have been monitoring the counting process.
Republican representatives have requested that election officials preserve detailed records relating to affidavit ballots, including information about accepted and rejected votes.
Democratic representatives have emphasized the importance of counting all eligible ballots.
Mississippi does not provide an automatic recount procedure for close U.S. Senate elections. A recount would require judicial intervention rather than being triggered by a narrow margin alone.
For that reason, the certification process and the handling of disputed ballots could become particularly important if the final result remains close.
Why this election matters beyond Mississippi
The race carries historical significance.
A Colom victory would make him the first Democrat elected to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since 1982 and the state’s first Black U.S. senator since the Reconstruction era.
The contest is also one of the remaining Senate races following the Democrats’ national midterm gains.
However, the outcome in Mississippi is not needed to determine which party controls the incoming Senate: Democrats have already secured a majority. It would instead determine whether that majority expands.
What happens next?
Three developments will be especially important over the coming days: the acceptance and reporting of outstanding affidavit ballots, the arrival of qualifying absentee votes, and the submission of updated county results.
The next meaningful changes could arrive before Tuesday’s deadline, although some counties may not report their complete totals until certification.
For now, the situation is straightforward: Colom leads by 2,574 votes in the AP snapshot, thousands of ballots remain under review or outstanding, and no winner has been officially confirmed.
Votendi will continue tracking the final vote count, county-level updates and certification process as Mississippi approaches the conclusion of one of the closest Senate contests of the 2026 midterms.
