Mississippi Senate Race Between Hyde-Smith and Colom Too Close to Call After Election Day

The Mississippi U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Scott Colom, a local prosecutor, remained too close to call on Wednesday, the day after Election Day, with the margin under 100 votes and more than 95 percent of ballots counted. Reported counts differed as tallies changed: Colom led by 65 votes in one count and by 43 in another, and one report put both candidates at 48.9 percent. About 44,000 ballots, including absentee, affidavit and provisional ones, were still outstanding. Colom said at a Wednesday news conference that his campaign was prepared to litigate and had many lawyers ready. Staff from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Elias Law Group, the campaign's lawyers, were in the state to examine the uncounted votes. Colom would be the state's first Black senator since Reconstruction. Mississippi is about 37 percent Black. Democrats had already won enough races to take a Senate majority without Mississippi, after wins in red states including Texas and South Carolina.

Right-leaning coverage leads with Democratic money and lawyers. Fox News headlines Gov. Gavin Newsom's emergency fundraising email and Marc Elias's legal team, quoting the email's warning of "ballot curing and possible legal fights" and giving the 44,000 outstanding ballots. The Blaze frames the race as a "dogfight" after a supposedly safe re-election, calls Colom "George Soros-backed," and cites polls that had favored Hyde-Smith. Left-leaning coverage focuses on the count and its history. NBC News stresses the extended count, possible recount and Democratic legal preparations, citing a source on strategy and Colom's "army of lawyers" remark. Mother Jones stresses Colom's historic chance, the state's record of diluting Black voting power, felony disenfranchisement figures from The Sentencing Project and rising Black turnout in the South. All sides agree on the razor-thin margin and the Democratic legal preparations. They differ on whether the story is about national Democratic mobilization and donors or about voting rights and a pending count. Straight Arrow News gives only the margin and the surprise of a race many expected to be safe.