Election 2026 live results: Karen Bass concedes LA mayoral race to Nithya Raman

Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's campaign said Thursday that it believes the Republican incumbent will still win reelection, while it remains prepared for potential legal challenges in the close race.

"Cindy Hyde-Smith is going to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate for the next six years. We believe thousands of votes remain to be counted from dozens of Republican counties, and we are confident those votes will reinforce her path to victory," the campaign wrote in a post on X.

-ABC News' Oren Oppenheim

The NAACP said on Thursday that it is sending "national legal, policy, and field staff to Mississippi, bolstering the capacity of the NAACP Mississippi State Conference to help voters navigate ballot cure requirements and ensure every eligible vote is counted and certified."

"We're working to ensure Black voters are heard and we won’t stop until their votes are certified," Derrick Johnson, the National NAACP President, wrote in a statement.

-ABC News' Oren Oppenheim

Democrat Scott Colom spoke with ABC News on Thursday at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi, as race between him and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith remains tight -- with around 1,000 votes separating the two, according to the current vote count.

Colom tells ABC News that his campaign didn’t get much attention or resources outside of Mississippi until about a month ago because some in his party couldn’t fathom that Democrats could flip a Senate seat in deep-red Mississippi.

He says that forced him to build a ground game that took him to many areas of the state and put him face-to-face with a lot of voters. Many of those voters gravitated toward him, he says, because they were tired of broken promises in Washington.

"The voters were betrayed. That gave us an opportunity to compete everywhere," he said.

-ABC News' Faith Abubey, Oren Oppenheim and Brendon Baur

Outgoing Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who conceded her Senate race to Democrat Troy Jackson, told The New York Times on Wednesday that she was “caught up in the Trump tsunami” that also took her Republican colleagues this election cycle, which saw Democrats pick up seven seats with the chance of possibly adding two more depending on the election results in Alaska and Mississippi.

“I was caught up in the Trump tsunami that swept away many incumbent Republican senators who have served their states well for many years and really care about our country,” Collins told The New York Times.

Collins has survived tough races before, but 2026 proved different, as President Trump's unpopularity and agenda affected Republicans down the ballot.

And although Collins emphasized her breaks with Trump during the election cycle, it proved not to be enough for Maine voters.

"Everybody ignores the fact that I voted to convict him in the second impeachment trial,” Collins said. “What bigger break could there be? It is never enough. I want results and they want angry rhetoric.”

-ABC News' Hannah Demissie