Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi’s US Senate seat, defeating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith after more than a week of counting, the Associated Press projected on Wednesday. Colom becomes the first Democrat to win a Senate race in the state since 1982, and the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
With about 99 per cent of the vote counted, Colom led by 4,669 votes — 473,336 votes (49.2 per cent) to Hyde-Smith’s 468,667 (48.7 per cent). The result remains unofficial until counties certify it, with certification due by Friday 13 November. Hyde-Smith conceded in a video posted to social media shortly after the call, saying she respected “the decision of Mississippi voters” and congratulating Colom on his win.
The victory is the Democrats’ eighth Senate pickup of the midterm elections and lifts their majority in the incoming Senate to 55 seats against 44 for the Republicans, with the race in Alaska still uncalled. The new Congress convenes on 3 January 2027.
Colom, 43, a district attorney and seventh-generation Mississippian, made the cost of living the centrepiece of his campaign, branding his opponent “Cindy High-Prices”. His campaign went viral earlier in the year after Hyde-Smith, a cattle rancher and former state agriculture commissioner, suggested shoppers facing high beef prices should choose “another protein”. Colom’s reply — that it was time to “pick another senator” — became one of the race’s defining moments.
The scale of the upset is hard to overstate. President Donald Trump won Mississippi by 23 points in 2024, and the Cook Political Report rated the race Likely Republican going into election night. National money and attention arrived only in the closing days, with a rally by Trump in the final week and visits from former Vice President Kamala Harris and Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. Colom had argued that the lack of early national investment was a mistake. “Mississippi has never been a lost cause, we’ve been a betrayed cause,” he told NPR. “The Democratic Party has not been trying to win Mississippi.”
Speaking to supporters at Tougaloo College, the historically Black college in Jackson, an emotional Colom paid tribute to his faith and to his campaign’s work, telling the crowd the victory belonged to the people of the state. “For months and months, I’ve been telling everybody everywhere I go that we’re gonna win this election,” he said. “But every time I said it, I pointed out that the people were gonna give me too much credit for it. Because it’s not something that I did. It’s something that we did!”
Colom will be the first Black senator from Mississippi since Blanche K. Bruce left office in 1881, and the first Black candidate elected to statewide office in the state by popular vote. Mississippi has the largest share of Black voters of any state in the country, at close to 40 per cent of the electorate, but had not sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than four decades.
Sources: NPR, “Democrat Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate race” (https://www.nprillinois.org/2026-11-11/democrat-scott-colom-wins-mississippi-senate-race); USA Today, “Scott Colom to become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction” (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/11/11/scott-colom-mississippi-first-black-senator-reconstruction/92643008007/). The race was called by the Associated Press on 11 November 2026; vote totals are unofficial pending certification.
