How Mississippi became an unlikely Senate battleground

By Fredreka Schouten, Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — An unpopular president, a charismatic Democratic candidate and an incumbent who has underperformed other Republicans in recent elections have turned a US Senate race in Mississippi into the nail-biter of the midterms.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Democrat Scott Colom was just a few dozen votes ahead of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a contest that remains too close to call but underscores the midterms’ seismic shift toward Democrats, even in deep-red territory.

The race could come down to roughly 15,000 provisional ballots, according to Colom’s campaign, still pending verification. But in the meantime, both sides expressed confidence they will prevail.

“Once the process plays out, where we are, where the ballots are, we’re gonna win,” Colom said during a news conference Wednesday. “And it’s because the people of Mississippi turned out in historic numbers to make this race possible in a midterm election.”

In a statement, Hyde-Smith campaign manager Jake Monssen said the team is “closely monitoring” the thousands of ballots still outstanding in the race.

“We remain confident that when every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted, Mississippians will have reelected Cindy Hyde-Smith,” he added.

The close race comes after Colom campaigned relentlessly to become the first Black senator from Mississippi since the Reconstruction era. The 43-year-old local district attorney argued repeatedly that the Republican headwinds and state’s significant Black electorate – which at 35% is the largest of any state – would put the GOP bastion in contention with enough attention and money.

He got both, with several Democratic super PACs making last-minute ad buys and a parade of his party’s biggest names, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, joining him on the stump in the campaign’s waning weeks.

Groups such as the Democracy Alliance – a network of liberal donors – also made early investments to build the infrastructure to support Democrats in the state, including helping the state branch of the NAACP open 11 voter registration sites to boost Black turnout. The NAACP said it registered more than 17,000 voters this year.

Black voters made up about 30% of voters in the race, according to the CNN Voter Poll, with nearly all of them breaking for Colom.

“Mississippians showed up and shocked the nation,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement Wednesday.

On the Republican side, President Donald Trump joined Hyde-Smith for an eleventh-hour rally to boost turnout in a state he won by 23 points just two years ago. Hyde-Smith has historically underperformed Trump after she was first appointed to the Senate 2018. In 2020, she won her first full term by 10 points, while Trump won Mississippi by 16 points that year.

During her tenure, however, Hyde-Smith also laid the groundwork for Colom’s challenge when she blocked his nomination to a federal judgeship in 2023, although Colom had the backing of other Republicans, including Sen. Roger Wicker, the state’s senior senator.

She objected to a donation by liberal billionaire George Soros to a PAC that backed Colom’s first district attorney race. She also cited Colom’s decision to sign a 2021 letter that condemned “the criminalization of transgender people and gender-affirming healthcare.”

In a recent interview with CNN, Colom insisted his campaign to oust Hyde-Smith is not a grudge match. “I’m a Christian. I forgive her,” he said. “Me not having a federal judgeship is not a motivating factor for me at all.”

Instead, he’s argued that the senator has failed her constituents in the Senate.

Colom’s campaign has unleashed some of the most attention-getting ads of the midterms to argue that the incumbent had lost touch with Mississippian’s economic pain. One video mocked Hyde-Smith for remarking that are “so many proteins to choose from” when asked about rising beef prices.

“Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind. I’d rather pick another senator,” one woman drawled in the ad that quickly went viral.

During the campaign, Colom deleted another ad that featured an artificial intelligence-generated depiction of Hyde-Smith running away from reporters after the state Attorney General Lynn Fitch threatened legal action against him.

Both sides now are gearing up for a legal showdown over the results as the ballot count continues.

Voter advocates and legal observers expect it could take until next week, at the earliest, for initial indications of how many of the roughly 15,000 provisional ballots – known in the state as “affidavit ballots” – will go into the final count after being vetted. Several counties in Mississippi have already started that process.

Provisional ballots are used in Mississippi for a number of reasons, such as a lack of a photo ID, a voter not being found in the pollbook — which can happen if a voter was tagged as inactive — or people submitting incomplete voter registration forms.

Voter advocates expect affidavit ballots cast by inactive voters to make up a significant share, because of a commercial credit data program the state used for the first time this cycle to clean its rolls. Those voters shouldn’t need to take extra steps to see their eligibility verified, but those who were missing photo ID or had other issues will need take action to cure their ballots.

In addition to canvassing the provisional ballots, election officials will also be counting mail ballots that arrive within a five-day grace period the state allows for properly postmarked absentee ballots to be received by the elections office. That number is expected to be smaller than the affidavit ballots to be processed.

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CNN’s Adam Cancryn and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.