Mississippi Certifies Today, Alaska Counts on November 18: The Last Two Senate Races Enter the Endgame

Ten days after Election Day, the 2026 Senate map has exactly two blank spaces left — and this is the week they start to fill in.

Mississippi — certification day. Counties must submit certified results today, Friday, November 13. In the last full AP tally (November 5), Democratic challenger Scott Colom led Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,138 votes — 464,926 to 463,788 — with later tallies widening Colom’s lead. Voters who cast affidavit ballots without photo ID had until November 10 to present identification and save their ballots, and roughly 3,600 mail ballots postmarked by Election Day were eligible to arrive within five business days. Mississippi has no automatic recount: if the certified margin stays this close and either campaign wants one, it will take a court order. If Colom’s lead holds through certification, he becomes the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Mississippi since John Stennis in 1982, and the first Black senator from the state since Reconstruction.

Alaska — the ranked-choice count. Alaska’s tabulation is scheduled for Tuesday, November 18. In the first-choice count, Democrat Mary Peltola led Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by 626 votes with about three-quarters of ballots counted, and overseas ballots postmarked by November 3 could arrive for up to 15 days. Because neither leader has a majority of first-choice votes, the ranked-choice system will eliminate the lowest finishers and redistribute their ballots until someone crosses 50% — which is why Alaska, alone among the states, is still counting on a schedule set more than two weeks after Election Day.

What is already settled: Democrats will hold at least 54 Senate seats in January, whatever happens in these two states. What is not settled is whether that majority is 54, 55 or 56 — and with it, the working margin for every confirmation fight and committee vote of the next two years.

The conservative take: This is the system working as designed — slowly, in public, on published dates. Certification deadlines and a pre-announced tabulation are not delays to be suspicious of; they are the process both parties agreed to before a single vote was cast. The time to argue about ranked-choice voting is in the legislature, before the next election — Alaska voters themselves just weighed a repeal measure — not in the middle of a count your side might lose.