Democrat Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate seat, first Black senator from the state since Reconstruction

A narrow win after a long count

Scott Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney from Columbus, Mississippi, was projected by the Associated Press on Wednesday, 11 November, to have defeated Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. The race had stayed too close to call since the 3 November midterm election, while election officials worked through more than 100,000 mail-in ballots. Thousands of residents who could not confirm their registration at polling sites also cast provisional ballots, which had to be checked for eligibility before they could count. Colom will be the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since Reconstruction, and the first Democrat to win a Senate race in the state since 1982, when John Stennis beat Haley Barbour. The state Trump carried by between 22 and 23 points in 2024, depending on the report, now has a Democratic senator, a result that adds to the party's gains in Republican strongholds.

Campaign and final weeks

Colom campaigned in all 82 of the state's counties, often wearing a sweatshirt and tech pants, and argued that Hyde-Smith had taken the seat for granted. He faulted her for failing to stand up to Trump over high gas and food prices and for holding no town halls. Colom also said he backed the Second Amendment and praised Trump for ending taxes on tips, positions he used to reassure voters who doubted his progressive politics. Hyde-Smith was outspent on television advertising by a flood of ads from left-leaning PACs and super PACs, which pushed support for Colom and attacked her vote not to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Her campaign also suffered after an interview with WLOX-TV in Jackson, where she said Mississippians had 'so many other proteins to choose from' when asked about beef prices. Colom's campaign turned that moment into a viral ad urging voters to 'choose another senator'. Trump spoke at a rally for Hyde-Smith in Alcorn County, a county he won by 68% in 2024, but the late push did not change the outcome. Bill Clinton, Kamala Harris and Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock also campaigned for Colom.

A dispute over the count

Hyde-Smith had said she was confident she would win once every legally cast vote was fully and accurately counted, and she was not seen publicly until she returned to Washington as the Senate resumed. Colom took a different approach, holding a series of public events after the vote in which he criticized his opponent. Speaking to reporters in Jackson, Mississippi, he pressed her to explain herself:

“Ultimately, at some point, the senator needs to speak out. Where is Cindy Hyde-Smith?”

Colom said voters wanted to hear from her and asked what her path to victory had been. The two had already crossed paths in 2023, when Hyde-Smith, citing concerns about Colom's position on transgender athletes, blocked his nomination as a federal judge. That post needed Senate approval, and Colom had been nominated by former President Joe Biden.

Senate arithmetic and Hyde-Smith's tenure

Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate in 2018 by then-Governor Phil Bryant, then won a full term in 2020 by about 10 points over Democrat Mike Espy. Her current term will end after eight years, so the seat now passes to Colom. Partial results reported by Mediafax put Democrats at 55 Senate seats and Republicans at 44, a count that reflects the wider wave of Democratic wins across the country in the midterms. Axios counted Texas and South Carolina among the other Republican strongholds where Democrats broke through this cycle.

Democrats55

Republicans44

Democrats

55 seats

Republicans

44 seats

Data from the article text