With four days until Election Day, Mississippi’s Senate race remains unresolved, defying election forecasters who never expected the race to be so close. Most forecasters rated the race as strong or likely Republican, even though the final poll, conducted Oct. 21 and 22, showed Democrat Scott Colom trailing Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by just three points, within the margin of error. A 2,574-vote lead in a race in which nearly 1 million Mississippians have cast ballots. Colom has expressed confidence that he will win, despite his narrow lead. “Everyone who knows mathematics is going in our direction,” he told reporters on Friday. Hyde-Smith issued a statement Friday afternoon saying “this election is not over.” “We are not going to back down,” his campaign said. “Our team is working across Mississippi to monitor remaining ballots and protect the integrity of the process. We will see it through to the end!” Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said Friday that there are just over 3,000 mail-in ballots that still need to be processed. These ballots can be legally received by officials until November 10, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. There are also outstanding provisional ballots, which are cast by voters whose eligibility cannot be immediately verified at the polls. Those ballots are set aside and reviewed before being counted. The exact number remains unknown, although Colom’s campaign has estimated there could be as many as 15,000. If Colom wins, he would be the first black U.S. senator to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction. He would also be the state’s first black senator elected by popular vote, as Mississippi’s two previous black senators were elected by the state legislature before the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, established the direct election of U.S. senators.
