Democrat Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate race, breaking the GOP’s grip on the state

Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, NBC News projects, capping off a string of Democratic victories by flipping the reddest seat yet in this year’s midterms.

Mississippi last elected a Democrat to the Senate 44 years ago, just a few weeks before Colom was born in 1982. Colom, a district attorney, will now become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

The historic win comes after days of uncertainty in the race, with Colom holding a razor-thin lead over Hyde-Smith as more votes continued to be counted. Colom remained confident throughout the vote counting that he would prevail.

Colom’s victory means Democrats will hold at least 55 Senate seats next year. The only Senate race left to be called is in Alaska.

In the next Congress, no Democratic senator will represent a redder state than Colom. President Donald Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points in 2024. Colom’s victory also underscores the Trump administration’s broad unpopularity with voters just two years after that presidential election, even in parts of the ruby-red Deep South.

A majority of Mississippi voters said they disapproved of Trump’s overall job performance, according to NBC News exit polling. Majorities also said his policies, including tariffs, hurt the economy and that it was wrong for the U.S. to take military action in Iran.

Colom, the eighth Democrat to flip a Republican-held Senate seat so far this year, long believed Democrats had an opportunity to win Mississippi, given its sizable Black population and plenty of white voters in rural areas who he thought could back a Democrat. And he chided his party for writing off the state.

“We were never a lost cause. We were betrayed cause,” Colom recently told NBC News. “We were betrayed by Cindy Hyde-Smith because she allowed tariffs to hurt us. She allowed people — hundreds of thousands of Mississippians — to lose health care. She gave away our voice in the war in Iran, which drove up costs for farmers and for truckers and for businesses.”

“But for too long we were also a betrayed cause by the national party because they did not compete in this state,” Colom added.

In late October, Senate Majority PAC, a top Democratic super PAC, announced an ad campaign in the state through Election Day, starting with a 30-second spot that presented Colom as a crusader who would “fight corruption in both parties.” The group ended up spending nearly $2.1 million on the airwaves, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

The GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund responded with a similar-sized buy, airing ads that painted Colom as “too liberal” and “too radical.”

The race also drew high-profile surrogates from both parties. Trump traveled to Mississippi eight days before the election, while Democrats such as former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sens. Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock hit the campaign trail for Colom. Former President Barack Obama also appeared in an ad that the Colom campaign launched on streaming platforms and online.

Republicans tried to leverage those surrogates against Colom, with SLF launching one ad with a narrator saying, “Colom proudly campaigns with Kamala Harris because Colom supports their radical agenda.”

But it was not enough to defeat Colom, who sharply criticized Hyde-Smith’s vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which cut Medicaid funds. Colom also faulted Hyde-Smith’s support for the Trump administration’s tariff regime and the costly war with Iran, labeling his opponent “Cindy High Prices.”

Colom’s campaign also created a viral video highlighting Hyde-Smith’s comments that Mississippians struggling with high beef prices “have so many proteins to choose from.” The video featured clips of people saying, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.”

Hyde-Smith, a former Mississippi agriculture commissioner who was appointed to the Senate in 2018 and won a full term in 2020, campaigned as a reliable conservative and attempted to portray Colom as a “radical” progressive. She also touted her loyalty to Trump, who endorsed her more than a year before the midterms and said she was “100% MAGA.”

Colom and Hyde-Smith had crossed paths before this year’s midterm elections. She blocked his nomination for a federal judgeship during President Joe Biden’s administration. Colom recently told NBC News that he had forgiven her.