Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom speaking to the audience at the 23rd annual Beans and Greens Dinner in Greenwood, Miss., on Oct. 8, 2026. MFP Photo by Kevin Edwards
Democrat Scott Colom’s lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has expanded further as opportunities to make up lost ground continue to slip away from the incumbent.
As of Friday afternoon at 5 p.m., Colom led Hyde-Smith by 2,574 votes out of over 950,000 cast statewide, the Associated Press reported. Thousands of votes are left, but most are expected to be affidavit ballots that could take counties until late next week to finish counting. Hyde-Smith would need a significant number of those affidavit ballots to break her way in order to win, but so far, Colom has consistently outperformed his overall margins in affidavit ballots, helping him pull further away in the vote tally.
Observers expect that thousands of the remaining affidavit votes will come from Hinds County, a majority-Black county where Colom leads the overall total by 79%-19%. Hinds County officials are still counting affidavit ballots and have not released any figures yet.
Award-winning News Editor Ashton Pittman, a native of the South Mississippi Pine Belt, studied journalism and political science at the University of Southern Mississippi. Previously the state reporter at the Jackson Free Press, he drove national headlines and conversations with award-winning reporting about segregation academies. He has won numerous awards, including Outstanding New Journalist in the South, for his work covering immigration raids, abortion battles and even former Gov. Phil Bryant’s unusual work with “The Bad Boys of Brexit" at the Jackson Free Press. In 2021, as a Mississippi Free Press reporter, he was named the Diamond Journalist of the Year for seven southern U.S. states in the Society of Professional Journalists Diamond Awards. A trained photojournalist, Ashton lives in South Mississippi with his husband, William, and their two pit bulls, Dorothy and Dru.
