Two Senate seats still hang in the balance after Democrats' victories overnight

LAST UPDATE | 4 Nov

Counting in Alaska's Senate race is still underway with Mary Peltola trailing incumbent Dan S. Sullivan Alamy

TWO SENATE SEATS still hang in the balance after Democratic candidates surged to victory overnight. 

The party has already secured control of the Senate partly as a result of victories in deep red states like Texas and Kansas. 

As many elections have already been called, Alaska and Mississippi counts are still underway.

In traditionally Republican Mississippi, the race is down to the wire.

Democrat Scott Colom has just 65 votes more than incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, with roughly 96% of the votes counted.

Not many touted the state as a battleground; Mississippi hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. 

With cost-of-living and healthcare some of the main focuses in this election, Hyde-Smith may have been hurt by her opposition to the Affordable Care Act. 

In her early days in politics, Hyde-Smith successfully ran as a Democrat for the Mississippi State Senate. 

“Voters know what’s at stake and we saw historic voter turnout in this election across Mississippi, including thousands voting for the first time,” Colom said on his campaign Facebook page early Wednesday.

In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola was ahead of incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan by 48.2% to 47.9%, with 77% of votes counted.

The race had attracted national attention following a New York Times investigation revealing that aides to Peltola had recruited another man named Dan Sullivan to run for office with the goal of siphoning votes from the Republican incumbent.

“My opponent’s campaign is literally focused on misleading Alaskans, lying, and cheating,” senator Sullivan told reporters on election day.

Peltola has denied any knowledge of the decoy candidate plot.

The result of the contest may not be declared for weeks, with Alaska employing a ranked-choice system and thousands of absentee and early votes still uncounted.

Alaska was considered a potential win for Democrats in the lead-up to the elections with Peltola having a narrow lead in the final days before the election.

Trump won Alaska in all three presidential elections he ran in.