RED-FACED

Dem Surges to Shock Four-Figure Lead in Deep Red State

Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom is leading his opponent by four figures.

Democrat Scott Colom has opened up a surprising four-figure lead over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, a deep-red state that Donald Trump carried by 20 points in 2024.

Colom now leads by 1,138 votes in the closely watched Senate race, a sharp increase from his narrow 43-vote advantage just a day earlier.

The latest shift marks a striking development in a state long considered safely Republican.

If he wins, he will be the state’s first Democratic senator since 1982, and the state’s first Black senator since the Civil War era.

While the race has not been officially called yet, Colom said yesterday he was confident he was going to win.

“The bottom line is, this is the beginning of a new direction for our state. We are going to win this,” Colom said. “I’m very confident about where we are, and I’m very confident that we’re going to win.”

A METEORIC ROAST

Republican Trump Rival Taunts Nemesis After ‘Meteor Strike’

Martha McHardy

Mississippi’s election laws make the situation particularly unusual. The state accepts ballots that arrive up to five business days after Election Day, provided they are postmarked by Election Day.

It also has no provision for automatic recounts, while its laws address election challenges only at the county level, leaving no clear process for contesting a statewide result.

Colom said Wednesday that he would not estimate how long it would take to count every vote and officially call the results, but vowed to “protect the process.”

Play Video

“We got the lawyers who are ready to make sure the law’s followed,” he said, daring his Republican opponent to challenge him. “We’ve got volunteers in each county to make sure that process is followed,” he said.

“I think anybody who can look at the math should be able to know where this is going,” he argued.

About 96 percent of the vote in Mississippi has been counted as of Thursday.

It comes as Tuesday night saw the Democrats flip a string of Republican strongholds to reclaim control of Congress in a historic rebuke for Trump’s Republican Party.

REALITY CHECK

Trump Stunned to Learn About Brutal Defeat Mid-Interview

Martha McHardy

That includes Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The election produced the second-biggest midterm swing towards Democrats since WWII.

Several Republicans, including JD Vance, have blamed Trump’s deeply unpopular Iran war for the party’s electoral losses.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance said in a post on X. “Everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

The war has sent energy prices spiking and Trump’s approval rating plummeting to a record low.

Still, while Trump has acknowledged that voters were unhappy with rising oil prices, he dismissed suggestions that his decision to go to war with Iran had hurt Republicans, insisting in an interview with The New York Times that he had no regrets and would make the same decision again.

Trump instead blamed his absence from the ballot for the Republican losses.

“I wasn’t on the ticket, and because I wasn’t on the ticket, we couldn’t get enough people out to vote,” he told the Times.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Martha McHardyReporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.