Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi's US Senate race, narrowly unseating two-term Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in a result that makes him the first Black person elected to the US Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction, more than 140 years ago.
Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, finished with 49.2% of the vote to Hyde-Smith's 48.7%, according to figures reported by CBS, with independent candidate Ty Pinkins taking about 2.1%. Fewer than 5,000 votes separated the two major-party candidates out of nearly a million counted — a margin so thin that the race remained uncalled for days after the 3 November election before networks including CNN and the Associated Press projected Colom the winner on Wednesday.
A deep-red state flips
Mississippi has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1982, and Donald Trump carried the state by 23 points in the 2024 presidential election. Colom's win followed a late surge in Democratic spending and organizing in a contest few national strategists had rated competitive at the start of the cycle. The result pushes Democrats' Senate caucus to 55 of 100 seats, with a tight race in Alaska still uncalled.
Hyde-Smith, first appointed to the seat in 2018 and elected twice since, conceded in a video posted to X on Wednesday evening. "While this was not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters," she said, adding that she wished Colom well. Mississippi has no mechanism for an automatic recount in federal races, and Hyde-Smith's concession all but closes the door on a legal challenge.
'It's something we did'
Colom delivered his victory speech on the campus of Tougaloo College, a historically Black college outside Jackson, before a crowd of cheering supporters gathered under the night sky. "They did not believe a moment like this was possible, but I kept the faith," he told them.
"It's not something that I did, y'all. It's something we did. In Mississippi, it's local people that make the difference."
Scott Colom, Senator-elect
Colom will be sworn in alongside the rest of the incoming Senate class in January, giving Mississippi a split delegation for the first time in decades. National Democrats, who have struggled for years to compete statewide in the Deep South, are already pointing to the result as evidence that even reliably Republican territory can be contested with the right candidate and sustained investment — a theory likely to be tested again in the next cycle's Southern Senate races.
