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The midterm elections delivered a national wave for Democrats, and one veteran analyst summed it up in words that are still ringing across Mississippi.
Howie Morgan, a political consultant with Election Impact Group, did not reach for cautious language when he assessed the results this week.
“It was an absolute obliteration of the Republican Party, a complete rejection of President Trump,” Morgan said.
Major Takeaways
- Democrats flipped seven Senate seats held by Republicans, took control of the chamber 54 to 44, and won the House as well.
- Analyst Howie Morgan called the result an absolute obliteration of the Republican Party and a complete rejection of President Trump.
- Mississippi still has no winner. Scott Colom leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,936 votes while affidavit and absentee ballots are counted.
- Ballots can arrive through November 10 and counties certify by November 13, and Mississippi law provides no recount.
A Wave Built on Two Years of Ground Work
Morgan credited the Democratic campaign and its ground game for the scale of the win.
He said their organizers had spent two full years registering voters before a single ballot was cast this fall.
That long runway showed up in the numbers on election night.
Democrats flipped seven Senate seats held by Republicans and took control of the chamber by a 54 to 44 margin, with a small number of races still out.
Democrats also won control of the House, completing a sweep of Congress in a single cycle.
The exit polling Morgan cited found an angry electorate behind the wave, with 75 percent of voters mad at President Trump and 40 percent really angry.
Our morning report on how Black voters came home in the 2026 midterm elections shows the voters who powered that shift.
Mississippi Is the One Race Still Standing
One race refused to follow the national script.
The Mississippi Senate race between Scott Colom and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith remains undecided days after Election Day, with counting under way in all 82 counties.
Colom, a district attorney from Columbus, leads with 466,959 votes.
Hyde-Smith holds 465,023 votes, and independent Ty Pinkins holds 20,010.
The margin stands at 1,936 votes. Every precinct has reported, and about 95.8 percent of the estimated vote has been counted.
Morgan called the Mississippi race even and said he could not predict where it will go.
He also said he did not expect the result to be certified until late next week.
Affidavit Ballots Sit at the Center of the Count
The delay traces back to the voter rolls themselves.
Roughly 230,000 Mississippi registrations were flagged inactive this year on faulty voter roll data.
Thousands of lawful voters reached the polls and learned their names had been marked inactive through no fault of their own.
Many of them voted by affidavit ballot, signing sworn statements so their votes could be verified and counted.
An estimated 17,000 affidavit ballots were cast across the state.
Secretary of State Michael Watson reported Thursday that 6,936 affidavit ballots had been processed, and about 80 percent of them were accepted.
About 3,300 absentee ballots sent by mail were still outstanding as the counties kept counting.
County level numbers released since then show that affidavit vote breaking strongly for Colom, as detailed in our report on the Mississippi affidavit ballots.
The Hyde-Smith campaign and national Republican groups have demanded that every county separate and preserve its affidavit ballots, a legal fight covered in Hyde-Smith Lawyers Demand Preservation of Affidavit Ballots.
What Morgan Sees Ahead
Looking past this cycle, Morgan said he expects Democrats to hold a large advantage in the House once every race is settled.
He named J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio as the future contenders most likely to shape the Republican Party from here.
Asked whether Republican candidates in Mississippi will put distance between themselves and President Trump, Morgan said he would think so, and that he hopes so.
That question hangs over the unfinished Senate race, where the incumbent tied her campaign closely to the president and now waits on ballots cast by voters the state itself had wrongly flagged.
The Clock Now Runs to November 13
State law allows affidavit and absentee ballots to arrive through November 10.
Counties must certify their results by November 13, and Morgan expects that certification to land late next week.
Mississippi has no recount law, so no automatic second count waits at the end of this process.
Any challenge after certification would have to go to court, or to the United States Senate itself.
For the Black voters who stood in line and signed sworn forms to defend their right to vote, this count is not an abstraction.
About four in five affidavit ballots processed so far have been accepted, proof that most of those voters were lawful voters all along.
When the last county certifies, Mississippi will finally learn whether the national wave reached its Senate seat too.
