Mississippi and Alaska Senate Races Hang on a Knife Edge as Late Ballots Keep the Outcome Unsettled
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
The Mississippi Senate contest shows Democrat Scott Colom narrowly ahead of incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 1,000 votes, while Alaska's race between Mary Peltola and Daniel S. Sullivan awaits a ranked-choice tabulation after a tight mail-in ballot count that could still swing the seat.
Mississippi and Alaska Senate races are still undecided as officials continue counting absentee and provisional ballots, underscoring once again how much damage endless ballot processing and late-count rules can do to public confidence in elections. In Mississippi, Democratic nominee Scott Colom holds a narrow lead of roughly 1,000 votes over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, according to the state secretary of state, with about 3,600 mail ballots and an unknown number of affidavit ballots still pending. The state has no automatic recount mechanism, meaning any challenge would require a court order. Colom urged voters to submit the required documentation for pending ballots and pledged to protect the election process.
"We have hundreds of volunteers, we’ve got local lawyers that are going to be at the county meetings in each county. We will protect the process of this election, we will protect the integrity of this election," Colom said at a news conference.
In Alaska, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola leads incumbent Republican Senator Daniel S. Sullivan by fewer than 1,000 votes, with a quarter of the expected votes still uncounted. Most of the remaining ballots are mail-in votes, which have historically favored Democrats, but the final result will depend on a ranked-choice tabulation scheduled for Nov. 18 if no candidate reaches the 50 percent threshold in the first round. Analysis shows that more than a third of voters who picked third-party candidates as their first choice did not rank additional candidates, which could distort the later rounds and make the process even more vulnerable to complaints about fairness.
Both races are part of a broader midterm picture in which Democrats are on track for a 50-seat majority in the House, while Republicans face internal challenges and leadership contests. Speaker Mike Johnson announced he will not seek the Republican conference chairmanship, opening a contest between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. Vice President JD Vance attributed Republican losses to the war in Iran, a view partially echoed by President Trump, whose blunt assessment reflects the chaos now gripping the party.
"The reason we lost is the war," Vance wrote on social media.
"If I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again," Trump said, describing Vance’s assessment as "largely true."
The tight margins in Mississippi and Alaska highlight how much the final composition of the Senate may depend on the last absentee and provisional ballots, and how easily a drawn-out count can leave voters waiting while the political system strains under its own rules.