The contest for the U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi is no longer rated as a likely Republican victory, with the New York Times shifting the race to a toss-up on Wednesday. The news organization now projects the margin between incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom at 0.9 percentage points, a decrease from its previous projection that Republicans would win the state by 2.5%.
The rating change follows early vote tallies that showed Hyde-Smith leading by 5.4 percentage points with 17% of ballots processed. Prediction markets reflected similar volatility; Kalshi reported that Hyde-Smith’s winning odds dropped from 85% to 60% on Wednesday afternoon before recovering to 87% by 3:16 UTC.
