It is looking increasingly likely that Scott Colom will upset Cindy Hyde-Smith, becoming Mississippi’s first Black Senator since Reconstruction. His lead has expanded considerably over the course of the past day, now sitting at 1,813 votes, which is roughly 0.1%.

Recall that earlier this summer, there was a 5-4 SCOTUS decision in favor of the Mississippi state law that permits mail-in ballots to be counted if they are received up to 5 days after election day. In light of that, as well as the rules around giving people who cast provisional ballots an ability to ‘cure’ them after election day, it should still be a while until a call is made. However, Colom’s optimism from yesterday appears to have been justified.

Things are also looking promising in Alaska. Only about three-quarters of the first-preference votes have been counted at this point, with Mary Peltola at 48.2%, the incumbent Dan S. Sullivan at 47.9%, Republican Gerald Helkes at 2.3%, and the mercurial Daniel J. Sullivan at 1.7%. Given that Alaska is a ranked choice state, on its surface that doesn’t sound so good for Peltola: One might expect all of Helkes’ vote to go to Senator Sullivan, and if you believe the story about name confusion then you might expect most of Daniel J.’s vote to also go to the Senator. Put differently, as the only Democrat on the ballot, from whom would Peltola be picking up second-preference votes? However, the NYTimes has an analysis today indicating that Peltola is actually attracting a sizeable fraction of the second-preference votes from both of the minor candidates. Coupling this with the fact that much of the uncounted mail-in vote is expected to favor Peltola, Polymarket currently implies a 97% chance that Peltola will win.

So, that would make 56 Senators in the Democratic caucus, which starts to beg a very interesting question: What is the possibility that 60 could be in play for 2028? The Democrats will have to defend the seat Brown just won in Ohio, and they also have to defend Kelly’s seat in Arizona, Fetterman’s in Pennsylvania (and one imagines there will be a primary challenge to unseat him), Cortez Masto’s in Nevada, and Warnock’s in Georgia. (There will also be a special election here in Minnesota in November 2027, on account of Klobuchar vacating the seat to become Governor.) On the flip side, the Republicans will have to defend the seat Moody just won in Florida, as well as several seats that now look vulnerable: Johnson in Wisconsin, Budd in North Carolina, Grassley (who would be 95 in 2028) in Iowa, Moran in Kansas, Scott in South Carolina, and Kennedy in Louisiana (a state where the Democrats lost narrowly in this cycle, 51-49, despite minimal investment). Murkowski will also be up for re-election in Alaska, where the ballot measure to repeal ranked choice and reinstate partisan primaries is currently failing, 51-49.

Over in the House, the NYTimes has the current score at 253-155, while NBC has it at 249-157; NBC now forecasts a final score of 259-176. The Maine 2nd race will be going to ranked choice re-allocations, with Republican LePage (who has already declared victory) currently ahead 49.9% to 48.3%, but that look like a rare blue-to-red flip. Still uncalled is the Minnesota 1st, where challenger Johnson remains ahead of Finstad, now by 321 votes. In another prominent uncalled race, the Colorado 4th, Lauren Boebert is behind 48.0% to 48.7%; Silver’s model had her as a 76% favorite.

We haven’t talked about Tennessee yet, where a gerrymander was designed to shift the House delegation from 8-1 Republican to 9-0. In the previously Democratic seat, the 9th district, the influence of Memphis voters was diluted via the addition of rural areas. The incumbent Democrat declined to run again after the gerrymander; however, 31-year-old State Representative Justin Pearson, who has become a prominent figure on the left in recent years, put up an unexpectedly good fight, only losing 48.5% to 49.6% (Silver’s model had him at 6% to win). And next door in the 4th district, a seat that Silver’s model had at 99.5% for the Republicans remains uncalled: the incumbent, DesJarlais, is currently behind by 380 votes. The Democrat, 34-year-old Victoria Broderick, had lost in 2024 to DesJarlais, 70-27. If she holds on to win, I imagine she becomes the least likely member of the 120th Congress–even less likely than Scott Colom, or some of the new Democratic Representatives from North Carolina.