Video taking off 14x its usual first day

Hyde-Smith would need 60% of Mississippi's uncounted ballots, Katy Tur's panel says

MS NOW's live update caught the Senate race in its last uncertain hours, before Scott Colom's victory over the Republican incumbent was confirmed.

Channel:

MS NOW Story of November 12, 2026Trari Newsroom

No. 55 on the daily chart

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 1,697,200 views a day, 14 times a normal first day on this channel (125,595).

BREAKING ELECTION ALERT: Dem Scott Colom's LEAD GROWS in Mississippi Senate race

Things we can learn from the video

Press to jump

0:03Katy Tur moves the Mississippi Senate race to Lean Dem, with Colom ahead by 3,783 votes.
0:50Nnamdi Egwuonwu reports that Hinds County's provisional and affidavit count is finished and favored Colom.
1:21Counties have until Friday the 13th to certify, and some affidavit numbers still need reconciling.
4:53Eugene Daniels recalls that Hyde-Smith had blocked Colom's nomination to a federal judgeship.
5:56Stuart Stevens argues the race is over and should be called.
7:43Tur and Shawna Thomas calculate that Hyde-Smith would need about 60% of the remaining ballots.

How much would Cindy Hyde-Smith have to win to catch up? Katy Tur and MS NOW political director Shawna Thomas worked through Associated Press estimates of the ballots still uncounted across Mississippi and arrived at a steep number. "Cindy Hyde-Smith would have to win about 60% of those votes to win," Thomas says.

The broadcast opens with Tur moving the race to "Lean Dem." Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney in north Mississippi since 2016, is ahead of the Republican senator by fewer than 3,800 votes. In Jackson, Nnamdi Egwuonwu reports that Hinds County has just finished counting its provisional and affidavit ballots, and that those ballots broke heavily for Colom. Counties have until Friday the 13th to certify, and a few affidavit figures still need reconciling.

The panel splits over how certain that is. Eugene Daniels notes the silence from Hyde-Smith's campaign and the history between the two candidates: she had blocked Colom's nomination to a federal judgeship. Stuart Stevens, the veteran strategist, has no patience for waiting. "This thing is done. It should be called," he says, adding that Colom's grandmother was a civil rights worker in Ripley and his mother a chancery judge. Near the end, Tur reads an internal analysis finding Colom running ahead of past Democrats in Democratic and Republican counties alike.

This was the most watched of a run of Mississippi updates on the channel that day, alongside reports on the state's strict voting rules. In the comments, many viewers bring up the blocked judgeship and ask the network to call the race.

By the next day the channel was posting Colom's victory remarks. He becomes Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

Published on Trari