Welcome to our continuing coverage of the 2026 midterms where almost 24 hours after Democrats secured their historic sweep of the US Congress, two Senate seats remain in play. Counting in Alaska is expected to continue into Thursday, while in deep red Mississippi, Democrats could be close to pulling off another almighty upset. Currently, Democrat Scott Colom is leading his Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 1,138 votes with almost 96% of the vote counted. In the last few hours, votes for Colom have been outpacing those for his Republican opponent, although new batches of votes have not been reported for several hours now. Although a race this close would automatically trigger a recount in some states, Mississippi has no law on the books for initiating a recount.

Democrats haven’t won a US Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, and Donald Trump carried the state by 22 points in 2024. It’s been much longer – not since 1875 – that the state elected a Black person to that office