Votes for Colom are starting to outpace those for his Republican opponent in what has been an otherwise neck-and-neck race in Mississippi's Senate election during the 2026 US midterms. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
According to the most recent tabulation from the Associated Press, Colom leads Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,138 votes with 96% of the vote counted – still a small margin, but increasingly significant after a lead of just 28 votes yesterday.
Democrats haven’t won a US Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, and Trump carried the state by 22 points in 2024. It’s been much longer – not since 1875 – that the state elected a Black person to that office.
Colom is a seventh-generation Mississippian, whose father was a longtime Republican who campaigned for Ronald Reagan and was friends with Thad Cochran, a longtime state politician. In 2015, he unseated a nearly 30-year incumbent when he was elected the first Black district attorney for the 16th circuit. As district attorney, he had a 94% success rate for convictions.
Although a race this close would automatically trigger a recount in many states, Mississippi has no law on the books for initiating a recount.
The outcome remains uncertain as vote counting continues, and a Republican blame game begins.