Jackson, Mississippi - Mississippi residents are facing a "nerve-wracking" wait to see whether the southern state elects its first Black senator in more than a century as vote-counting dragged on Sunday after last week's midterms.

Voters who spoke to AFP in the state capital of Jackson on Saturday anticipated that history could be in the making in the whisker-close race between Democrat Scott Colom, an African-American man, and Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white woman.

With 97% of the vote counted by Sunday afternoon, Colom was 2,574 votes ahead of Hyde-Smith - a gap of just 0.3%.

Mississippi has not elected a Democratic senator since 1982, and Colom would be its first Black senator in nearly 150 years, since the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War that ended slavery.

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Gregory Glass, a 47-year-old restaurant owner, himself an African-American, said a victory for Colom would be "historic" but admitted to having "bittersweet" feelings about that.

"It should have happened sooner than that, especially in Mississippi, in a state that has so many African-Americans in it," said Glass.

"The waiting is a little bit nerve-wracking because you want them to just call it," he added.

According to the US Census Bureau, more than one-third of the state's population, long viewed as a bastion of Republican politics, is Black.

A victory for Colom would also put another staunchly Republican state - including Texas, South Carolina and Kansas - in the Democrats' column for Senate in Tuesday's election.

The midterms were a resounding win for Democrats, who seized control of both houses of Congress as voters nationwide delivered a stinging rebuke to Republican President Donald Trump.

The count is not over yet.

The unusually long wait reflects Mississippi's election procedures, which allow officials several days to process mail-in and provisional ballots - potentially enough to decide the contest.

Jermal Clark, election commissioner for Hinds County, which includes the city of Jackson, said that they were still going through so-called "affidavit" provisional ballots, which are cast by people whose eligibility cannot be confirmed at polling stations, sometimes because of missing identification or discrepancies in voter registration records.

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Secretary of State Michael Watson shared an X post on Friday announcing that 11,202 affidavit ballots have now been processed, with roughly 78% of them being accepted.

He also said there are just under 2,900 outstanding absentee ballots.

"I'm just amazed at how so many communities and these election people are coming together to make sure every single vote is cast," said voter Coretta Fraser, a human resources manager.

Mississippi has no automatic recount procedure, although candidates can seek court intervention.

The contest has prompted both parties to deploy lawyers, with Republicans demanding that officials preserve records relating to the outstanding ballots in anticipation of possible legal challenges.