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Five days before Election Day, the Mississippi Senate race has become a national fight.
Presidents have now campaigned in the state for both candidates in a single week.
Black voters in Mississippi hold the votes that could settle it.
Major Takeaways
A late October poll put Senator Cindy Hyde Smith ahead of Scott Colom by three points.
Representative Jim Clyburn toured the state with Colom on Thursday on a three stop swing.
Former President Bill Clinton campaigns with Colom in Tupelo on Friday, October 30.
Colom would become the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Control of the Senate could turn on races in states long counted as safe Republican ground.
Mississippi Senate race enters the final five days
Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
Republicans now hold the Senate by 53 seats to 47 seats.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control.
Mississippi was never supposed to be part of that math.
President Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 23 points in 2024.
No Democrat has won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982.
Yet both parties are spending and sending their biggest names into the state.
That rush tells its own story about a race that refuses to follow the script.
It also mirrors the turnout surge already reshaping contests across the region, as our report on the Southern Black turnout surge showed this week.
The numbers show a lead that keeps shrinking
The newest public poll in the race surveyed 842 likely voters on October 21 and 22.
It found Hyde Smith at 43 percent and Colom at 40 percent.
Independent Ty Pinkins drew 6 percent, and 9 percent of voters stayed undecided.
A forecast updated on October 29 still gave Republicans a 67 percent chance of winning.
That same forecast projected Hyde Smith at 48.8 percent and Colom at 45.2 percent.
It also gave the race a 42 percent chance of ending within five points.
One major rating service moved the race from solid Republican to likely Republican this month.
Another simulator cut her projected lead to three points, down from eight points in August.
Hyde Smith has shown weakness in this state before.
In 2020, she ran six points behind Trump in Mississippi even as she won.
Money tells the same close story.
Reports filed in mid October showed Hyde Smith raising about 6.3 million dollars.
Colom raised about 4.4 million dollars in the same reports.
A national Democratic group then placed a television buy of 1.2 million dollars for Colom.
The party campaign arm added a coordinated buy of 500,000 dollars this week.
The biggest names in politics are coming to Mississippi
Trump opened the week for Hyde Smith with a rally in Corinth on Monday.
He spoke for more than an hour and a half.
He said the record of Hyde Smith was pretty hard to beat.
Colom answered in a way few challengers would dare.
He walked the line outside the Trump rally and talked with Trump voters.
On Thursday, Clyburn joined Colom for three stops across the state.
Clyburn has served in Congress for more than 30 years.
Black voters across the South know his voice from decades of civil rights work.
His 2020 endorsement in South Carolina reshaped a presidential race that year.
On Friday, Clinton takes the stage with Colom in Tupelo.
Colom said he was honored that Clinton is coming to Tupelo.
He said the visit would highlight the rising cost of gas and groceries.
He said tariffs are also hurting farmers and small businesses in the state.
Those are the same issues Trump voters raised with him on Monday, he said.
He added that Mississippians are ready to fire Cindy High Prices on November 3.
The Democratic bench has been building toward this week for days.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris rallied with Colom in Columbus at his alma mater.
She told the crowd that the road to Senate control runs through Mississippi.
Senator Raphael Warnock campaigned with Colom last week as well.
Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg joined him in Biloxi on October 27.
Buttigieg said electing Colom would send shockwaves through the country.
Senator Maria Cantwell spoke in Jackson on October 28 with Nadia Colom, his wife.
Colom carries a history making chance into November
Colom serves as district attorney for four counties along the Alabama border.
He became the first Black district attorney in his district and won reelection twice.
He is also a former nominee to serve as a federal judge.
Hyde Smith blocked that nomination in the Senate during the prior administration.
A win would make Colom the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
It would also make him the first Democrat elected to the Senate here in 44 years.
Mississippi has the largest Black share of any state population in the nation.
About 36 percent of the state is Black, based on census figures.
That share is why close statewide races here always run through Black turnout.
One veteran Democratic strategist put the formula plainly this week.
He said Democrats win across the South with overwhelming support from African American voters.
He said they pair that support with a solid share of white voters.
Warnock has warned his own party not to miss that chance.
He said Democrats risk missing a real opportunity to invest in the South.
He argued that the investment must be serious and sustained, not a late gesture.
The new television ad for Colom leans on his record as a prosecutor.
Its narrator calls Hyde Smith a senator who has passed no legislation in a decade.
The narrator also says she voted to kick people off Medicaid.
Republicans have answered by tying Colom to national Democratic leaders and donors.
Voters have also remembered her answer on the price of beef this year.
Asked about skyrocketing beef prices, she said people have so many proteins to choose from.
That line landed hard in a state where grocery bills shape daily life.
It echoes the access fights playing out at polling places this fall, as our coverage of poll guardians preparing for Election Day detailed.
Pinkins and the math that could decide it all
One name could shape the final count as much as the two leaders.
Pinkins is an attorney and an Army veteran who served 21 years.
He grew up in the Mississippi Delta and attended Tougaloo College.
He earned law degrees at Georgetown and does free legal work for underserved communities.
He ran statewide twice before as a Democrat and now runs as an independent.
His 6 percent in the late October poll exceeds the gap between the leaders.
Where his voters land, and whether they stay with him, matters enormously.
National conditions add one more layer to the math.
More than 41 million Americans had already voted by Thursday morning.
A national survey completed Monday put approval of Trump at 32 percent.
Anger over prices and a war abroad has followed Republican incumbents all fall.
Those winds are part of why this race sits within reach at all.
They are also why screening fights over ballots carry such weight this year, as our citizenship screening report showed this morning.
What Black Mississippi decides in the closing days
This race will not be won on television in the final five days.
It will be won in church parking lots and on family phone calls.
It will be won by rides to the polls and by elders reminding the young to go.
Absentee voting remains open for a few more days in Mississippi.
Every voter should confirm a polling place and a plan before Tuesday.
Colom needs historic Black turnout plus a real share of white voters.
Hyde Smith needs her base to treat a likely win as a race she can lose.
Both campaigns clearly believe the seat is live, or the presidents would stay home.
On November 3, Mississippi gets to answer a question it has carried since Reconstruction.
Black Mississippi helped build this state and has waited generations for this seat.
Now the whole country is watching whether that wait ends next week.
