Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate seat, ousting Hyde-Smith
Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi by about 4,600 votes out of roughly 962,000 counted, after eight days of ballot counting. He will be the state's first Black US senator since Reconstruction and its first Democratic senator elected since 1982; results stay unofficial until counties certify on 13 November.
Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi's US Senate race, unseating Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in one of the biggest upsets of the 2026 midterm elections. The Associated Press called the race shortly before 5 p.m. Central Time on Wednesday 11 November, eight days after polls closed, when Colom led by 4,669 votes out of 962,237 counted, a margin of about 0.5 percentage points. Hyde-Smith conceded the same evening.
Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney from north Mississippi, will be the state's first Black US senator since Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, and the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Mississippi since John Stennis in 1982. The result is still unofficial: Mississippi's counties must certify their totals to the Secretary of State by Friday 13 November.
What were the final numbers?
According to figures reported by Mississippi Today and the BBC on Wednesday night, Colom took 49.2% of the vote and Hyde-Smith 48.7%, with an independent candidate, Ty Pinkins, making up most of the remainder. Colom's lead stood at 4,645 votes on Wednesday night as some counties continued to post updates.
The count was unusually slow and close. The AP said that after the final election-night update, which arrived at 2:03 a.m. Central Time from Pike County, Colom led by just 43 votes. Over the following week, county election officials processed absentee ballots and affidavit ballots, Mississippi's term for provisional ballots cast when a voter's eligibility needs to be checked. Mississippi Today reported a 1,764-vote Colom lead on 5 November and a lead of nearly 2,500 on 6 November.
State election officials said on Wednesday that 19,218 affidavit ballots had been processed statewide, with about 74% accepted, according to DeSoto County News. The AP estimated that fewer than 12,000 votes remained to be reviewed before Friday's certification deadline, and said many of those were affidavit ballots that may not all be accepted.
The decisive update came from Jackson County on the Gulf Coast, which added 2,173 votes. To catch up, the AP said, Hyde-Smith needed to win late updates in Republican-leaning counties such as Jackson; instead Colom won that batch by just over 1 percentage point.
Why did the AP call the race before certification?
The AP explained that Colom's lead had grown as counties completed their counts and that he had won the vast majority of late updates "in every region of the state and in all but the most Republican counties." With fewer votes outstanding than his margin, there was no realistic path for Hyde-Smith to overtake him.
Mississippi has no automatic recount law and no procedure for a candidate to request one, Mississippi Today noted; a recount would happen only if a court ordered it. The AP added context: there have been about 40 recounts in statewide US elections since 2000, only three changed the winner, and all three involved margins of hundreds of votes rather than thousands.
Before the race was called, the state Republican Party chairman, Mike Hurst, had promised to fight over the affidavit ballots, and both campaigns sent lawyers to monitor counting. After the call, Hurst said Colom "ran a good campaign" and that Republicans respected the voters' decision, DeSoto County News reported.
What did Colom and Hyde-Smith say?
In a video posted to social media, Hyde-Smith said: "While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters. I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state." A source close to Colom's campaign told Mississippi Today she had also called him to concede.
Colom spoke to supporters on Wednesday night at Tougaloo College in Jackson, a historically Black college that sheltered voting-rights activists during the Civil Rights Movement. He invoked civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer and, according to the BBC, told the crowd: "It's not something that I did y'all. It's something we did." He pledged to represent "the ones that voted for me, the ones that didn't vote for me, the ones that didn't vote."
Mississippi's Republican governor, Tate Reeves, congratulated the senator-elect and said he hoped to work with him on jobs, wages and education.
Why is the result considered historic?
Mississippi has the largest share of Black residents of any US state, the AP noted, but it has not had a Black senator since Blanche K. Bruce left office in 1881. Bruce and Hiram Revels, the state's two Black senators during Reconstruction, were chosen by the state legislature, as all senators were before the 17th Amendment introduced direct elections in 1913. Mississippi Today reported that Colom will also be the first Black person elected to any statewide office in Mississippi since Reconstruction.
The result also breaks a long Republican hold. Mississippi has elected only Republican senators for about 40 years, and Mississippi Today said Colom is the first challenger to oust one of the state's sitting senators since the 1940s. Donald Trump won the state by about 23 points in 2024, and most forecasters had rated the race safe for Republicans.
Hyde-Smith, a cattle farmer from Brookhaven, was appointed to the Senate in 2018 to replace the retiring Thad Cochran and then twice defeated Democrat Mike Espy, in a 2018 special election and in 2020.
How did Colom win in such a Republican state?
Reporting from Mississippi Today, the BBC and the AP points to several factors, though no single explanation has been confirmed by detailed post-election data yet.
- Cost of living. Colom tied Hyde-Smith to high prices and Trump's tariffs, nicknaming her "Cindy High Prices." Exit polls cited by the BBC suggested voter frustration with the economy and the war with Iran drove the wider Democratic swing this year.
- A viral moment. Hyde-Smith's suggestion that voters upset about beef prices should "pick another protein" became a Colom advert in which supporters said they would rather pick another senator.
- Turnout and crossover voters. Mississippi Today said Colom turned out large numbers of Black voters, persuaded some Republicans and won DeSoto County, a Republican-leaning suburb of Memphis, by about seven points. He also flipped Lafayette and Madison counties and narrowed his losses in coastal Harrison County.
- Campaign style. He visited all 82 counties, the BBC reported, and at one point spoke to voters waiting in line for a Trump rally for Hyde-Smith. Hyde-Smith declined to debate him and was criticised for limited public appearances.
There is also a personal back story. In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to a federal judgeship in northern Mississippi; Hyde-Smith used the Senate's "blue slip" custom, which lets home-state senators block district court nominees, to stop it. Had that nomination gone ahead, Mississippi Today noted, Colom would probably have become a lifetime federal judge instead of a candidate.
Hyde-Smith's campaign portrayed Colom as a puppet of national Democrats, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and the billionaire donor George Soros, whose family has helped fund his campaigns.
What does it mean for the Senate?
Democrats had already won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in this year's midterms, flipping Senate seats in states including Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa, according to the BBC. Colom's win brings the party to 55 seats in the 100-member chamber, with Alaska's race still too close to call as of Wednesday night.
The extra seat does not change who controls the Senate, but a larger majority gives Democratic leaders more room on party-line votes and committee ratios. Democrats are also likely to cite Mississippi as evidence that they can compete in deeply Republican states; how far that carries into future elections is a matter of analysis, not something the result itself proves.
What happens next?
Counties must certify their results by Friday 13 November, after which the Secretary of State's office compiles the statewide result. Some local counts, including DeSoto County's review of more than 2,000 affidavit ballots, were still under way when the race was called, so the final margin may shift slightly.
Colom is due to take his seat when the 119th Congress ends and the 120th Congress begins in early January 2027. Hyde-Smith remains Mississippi's senator until then.
Image: Photo: Ben Ledbetter, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scott_Colom_Rally.jpg) — Colom supporters in Corinth, Mississippi, on 26 October 2026, resized; taken before the election, not at the victory event
About this article: prepared by The Daily Context editorial desk using automated, source-based reporting from the publications linked below. No reporter was on the ground.
Sources
- Mississippi Today: Colom wins: Mississippi picks another senator (11 Nov 2026) https://mississippitoday.org/2026/11/11/scott-colom-wins-senate-mississippi-hyde-smith/
- Associated Press via Mississippi Today: Why AP called Mississippi's US Senate race for Scott Colom (11 Nov 2026) https://mississippitoday.org/2026/11/11/why-ap-called-mississippi-senate-race-scott-colom/
- BBC News: Democrat Scott Colom makes history as Mississippi elects first black senator for 150 years (12 Nov 2026) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw7vppyr80eeo
- Associated Press: Mississippi elects Democrat Scott Colom as state's first Black US senator since Reconstruction https://apnews.com/article/scott-colom-mississippi-senate-midterms-56c18f292a734443992f9466c3b0f346
- DeSoto County News: Colom wins Senate race as DeSoto County counts affidavits (11 Nov 2026) https://desotocountynews.com/mississippi-news/colom-wins-desoto-affidavit-ballots/
- Mississippi Today: Colom v Hyde-Smith: what's next in the Mississippi Senate race? (5 Nov 2026) https://mississippitoday.org/2026/11/05/thousands-of-affidavit-ballots-outstanding-in-mississippi-senate-election-campaigns-prepare-for-legal-fight/
Kabeer Ahmad
Kabeer Ahmad is the founder and editor of The Daily Context. He oversees the site's source-based coverage of world affairs, technology, business, entertainment, lifestyle and sports, and is responsible for its editorial standards, sourcing and corrections.
