More than a week after Election Day, two of the closest U.S. Senate races in the country have reached very different endpoints — one decided, one still weeks from a final answer.
In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, according to the Associated Press, flipping a seat Republicans had held for a decade and making Colom the state's first Black senator since Reconstruction. The race stayed uncalled for more than a week as election officials worked through provisional and absentee ballots; an early count put Colom ahead by just 43 votes out of more than 925,000 cast, with independent candidate Ty Pinkins drawing nearly 20,000. The AP's call credited Colom's showing among Mississippi's large Black electorate, discontent over the cost of living, and missteps by Hyde-Smith's campaign.
Alaska still undecided
Alaska's Senate race, by contrast, remains unresolved. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola, a former U.S. House member, were separated by fewer than 1,700 votes out of more than 208,000 cast on election night, with neither candidate above the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright, according to local tracking of the count. Under Alaska's ranked-choice system, the race will not be decided until Nov. 18, when election officials redistribute the second-choice votes of eliminated minor candidates. One independent analysis found that Sullivan stands to gain more from that redistribution than Peltola, giving his campaign reason for optimism even as both sides have publicly claimed they will win. State officials have said they expect to certify the final results by Nov. 25.
The two races are among the last pieces of a midterm election that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2018. Democrats are projected to hold roughly 228 House seats to Republicans' 139, with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries in line to become speaker when the new Congress convenes Jan. 3, and are on track to control the Senate by a 54-44 margin once Mississippi and Alaska are finalized. Turnout topped 124 million ballots nationwide, by one academic tally, eclipsing the previous midterm record set in 2018.
Whichever way Alaska ultimately breaks, Senate Democrats' incoming majority is no longer in doubt; what remains to be settled is only its exact size, and whether the chamber's newest member will be a five-term Republican incumbent or the second Alaska Native woman ever elected to the Senate.
