Two days after Americans voted in the 2026 midterm elections, the biggest questions in Washington had been answered in projections, but dozens of individual races had not. News organizations projected that Democrats had won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, yet the Associated Press had not called two Senate races, in Alaska and Mississippi, and roughly 60 House races were still uncalled on Wednesday morning. The gap between a projected majority and a finished count is normal in American elections, but it matters this year because the final margins will decide how large the Democratic majorities are, which candidates take office in January, and how much room the new majorities have to govern. Until states certify their results, every number on television screens and results pages is unofficial, and in the closest races the numbers are still moving.
The reason the count takes so long is not a single delay but a set of different state laws. Each state runs its own election, sets its own deadlines for mail ballots to arrive, and certifies on its own schedule. Some states count quickly because they require mail ballots to arrive by Election Day and begin processing them early. Others accept ballots postmarked by Election Day for days afterward, and a few use ranked-choice voting that adds a second stage of counting. The result is a calendar that stretches from the first certifications in mid-November to the final statewide certification in California on December 11, with some states setting no fixed date at all. Voters who went to bed on election night expecting a finished result woke up instead to a process that will take weeks.
That process is worth understanding on its own terms, because the words used to describe it are often confused. A race call by the Associated Press or a television network is a projection, made when analysts conclude that the trailing candidate has no realistic path to close the gap. It is not an official result. Certification is the official result: the formal signing-off on the count by county and state officials after ballots are canvassed, checked, and audited. A candidate can lead a count for days without winning, and a candidate can trail on election night and still win once late mail ballots are counted. In 2026, both of those things are happening in different races at the same time.
Alaska and Mississippi Senate races remain uncalled
The two uncalled Senate races could hardly be more different in why they are still open. In Mississippi, the race between Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom, a district attorney from northern Mississippi, was effectively tied. With about 96 percent of the vote counted, Colom led Hyde-Smith by roughly 1,100 votes, with each candidate holding about 49 percent of the vote, according to Associated Press figures reported on Wednesday night. The exact margin has shifted as tallies have been updated, with different outlets reporting slightly different totals at different times, which is itself a sign of how fluid an unfinished count can be. A few thousand provisional and mail-in ballots remained to be counted, including about 3,600 mail ballots that Mississippi officials expected could still arrive, along with an unknown number of affidavit ballots.
Mississippi accepts mail ballots that arrive by the Tuesday after Election Day, which this year is November 10, following a ruling by the state Supreme Court in June. Voters who cast affidavit ballots have until November 10 to show identification. Counties must submit their certified results to the secretary of state by November 13. Mississippi is unusual in another way: the state has no mechanism for an automatic recount, and no straightforward method for a candidate to demand one, so a recount would require a court order. That means the final answer in Mississippi is likely to come from the ordinary count and certification, not from a recount, unless a court intervenes.
Alaska presents a different set of complications. Democrat Mary Peltola, a former member of the House of Representatives, led Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan by about 626 votes with roughly 74 percent of ballots counted, according to Associated Press figures. Nearly a quarter of the expected vote remained uncounted, in a state where vast distances and a large number of rural voters slow the count. Alaska accepts mailed ballots for up to 10 days after Election Day, and ballots posted from abroad for up to 15 days, provided they were sent by November 3. That alone pushes the final count well into November.
Alaska also uses ranked-choice voting, which adds a second stage. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots transfer to the next candidate ranked by each voter. The process repeats until one candidate has a majority. With four candidates on the ballot, including Republican Gerald Heikes and Dan J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher who shares the incumbent senator’s name, neither Peltola nor Senator Sullivan had crossed 50 percent of first-choice votes. According to the Alaska Division of Elections, ranked-choice tabulation is scheduled for November 18, and the state aims to certify on November 25. The presence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan has drawn national attention, and the Justice Department filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent Alaska from certifying its results, arguing that the second Sullivan amounted to an attempt to distort voter choice. A judge dismissed that suit on November 1, and the department has appealed, according to reporting on the case.
Why House races in California take the longest
While the two Senate races draw the most attention, the largest group of uncalled races is in the House, and many of them are in California. About 60 House races were still uncalled on Wednesday morning, and California accounts for a large share of them because of the way the state counts mail ballots. California allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive up to seven days later, so ballots for the November 3 election can arrive until November 10. Millions of Californians vote by mail, and election officials are allowed several weeks to process and verify those ballots. County election officials must prepare certified statements of results within 30 days of the election, by December 3, and the secretary of state must certify the statewide statement of the vote no later than the 38th day after the election, which is December 11.
That long tail is a feature of California law, not a sign of a problem with the count, but it has real consequences. Close House races in the state can shift as late ballots arrive, and the final size of the Democratic House majority will not be known until those races are called. The same pattern applies in other states that count late-arriving mail ballots, though on a smaller scale. In every state, the count continues until the law says it stops, and officials check signatures, resolve questions about individual ballots, and reconcile the number of ballots cast with the number of voters who participated before they sign off.
The slow pace has become a familiar part of American elections, and it is one reason that election-night coverage now routinely carries warnings that results are unofficial and subject to change. In 2026, the warnings matter more than usual because control of both chambers has already been projected, and the remaining question is the size of the majorities. A majority of one seat governs very differently from a majority of 20, particularly in the Senate, where most legislation needs 60 votes to advance, and in the House, where a narrow majority gives every faction leverage over the leadership.
Runoffs, recounts and the road to certification
In Georgia, the calendar includes one more step that other states do not have. If no candidate wins a majority in a general election contest, Georgia holds a runoff on December 1, 2026, and runoff results must be certified by December 18. That gives Georgia voters a second round of voting nearly a month after Election Day, and it means that any Georgia race that goes to a runoff will be among the last to be decided. The runoff rule is a reminder that the American system does not have a single election day for practical purposes: it has an election season that ends at different times in different states.
Recounts follow different rules in different states as well. Some states trigger an automatic recount when the margin falls below a set threshold, often a fraction of a percent. Others allow a candidate to request a recount, sometimes at the candidate’s expense if the margin is above the automatic threshold. Mississippi, as noted, has no automatic recount mechanism for the Senate race. In states where recounts do happen, they rarely change the outcome unless the margin is extremely small, but they can take days and they add another layer of checking to the count. Challenges to results, known as election contests, have their own deadlines, and in some states the window for filing a contest closes only after certification.
Certification itself happens in stages. Counties canvass their results first, checking that the number of ballots matches the number of voters, reviewing provisional ballots, and conducting audits in states that require them. State officials then certify the statewide results. The earliest states certify within about a week of the election: South Dakota certifies within seven days, for example. Florida’s Elections Canvassing Commission certifies federal and state offices on the 14th day after the election, which is November 17, after county returns are due by noon on the 13th day. Georgia’s deadline is 5 p.m. on the 17th day after the election. Illinois allows up to 31 days. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island do not specify a statutory deadline at all. The range is wide, and it is the reason there is no single national date on which the 2026 results become official.
What the wait means for the new Congress
None of this waiting changes when the winners take office. Under the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, the terms of House members and senators end, and their successors’ terms begin, at noon on January 3 in odd-numbered years. The winners of the 2026 midterms do not start work the day after certification. They take their seats when the 120th Congress convenes on January 3, 2027, and until then the current Congress, with its Republican majorities, keeps all of its powers. That is why the lame-duck session that begins when lawmakers return on November 9 matters so much: the people voting in November and December are the outgoing Congress, not the one voters have just chosen in projections.
For the public, the practical advice is simple and unsatisfying: treat every uncalled race as undecided, however large a lead looks, and treat every called race as a projection until the state certifies it. Leads have changed before as late ballots were counted, and they will change again before December 11. The count is slow because the law requires officials to count every valid ballot, check it, and certify the outcome, and that work does not speed up because the political stakes are high. The results will be final when the states say they are final, and not before.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Al Jazeera, TBS News and Congress Countdown.