Democrat Scott Colom has unseated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, NBC News, CNN and the Associated Press projected Wednesday. President Trump carried the state by 23 points in 2024, and the win gives Democrats at least 55 Senate seats next year.
CNN PROJECTS THAT SCOTT COLOM WINS THE SENATE RACE IN MISSISSIPPI! pic.twitter.com/7MVfp94PAh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 11, 2026
Hyde-Smith called Colom late Wednesday afternoon to concede, two sources close to his campaign told CNBC.Â
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X: “Blue Mississippi is here.”
Colom is the first Democrat Mississippi has elected to the Senate since 1982, a few weeks before he was born, and he will be the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. He is the eighth Democrat to flip a Republican-held Senate seat this year, and no Democrat in the next Senate will represent a redder state.
Election night ended with Colom ahead by 43 votes with more than 95% counted, as we noted the next morning. Affidavit ballots, cast provisionally when a voter’s eligibility is in question, then broke his way, as did late returns from Hinds County, home to Jackson, where he took about 80% of the vote. With an estimated 99% counted on Tuesday, he led 49.18% to 48.72%, with independent Ty Pinkins at 2.1%, according to the AP’s count as reported by CNBC.
By Wednesday afternoon the AP had Colom ahead by 4,585 votes. His campaign put the margin at 5,568 once official results from 24 counties that had certified were added, and said shortly before the call: “The data is clear: Scott Colom will be the next U.S. Senator for Mississippi and his victory is now a guarantee,” the Mississippi Free Press reported.
In a Nov. 6 Facebook statement, Hyde-Smith wrote, “We are not backing down,” adding, “This election is not over,” and promised that her team would “see this through to the very end!” according to the Free Press. Colom had lawyered up the day after the election (“We got the lawyers who are ready to make sure the law’s followed,” he said), and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias said his firm was leading the legal effort on Colom’s behalf, the Daily Beast reported. Elias is reportedly under Justice Department investigation in the Peltola case in Alaska, as we noted Tuesday.
Colom hit Hyde-Smith over her vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and its Medicaid cuts. He branded her “Cindy High Prices” over her support for Trump’s tariffs and the costly war with Iran. One viral video from his campaign seized on her remark that Mississippians facing high beef prices “have so many proteins to choose from,” with voters saying, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.”
“We were never a lost cause. We were a betrayed cause,” Colom told NBC News before the call, saying Hyde-Smith “gave away our voice in the war in Iran,” and faulting his own party for not competing in the state.
A majority of Mississippi voters disapproved of Trump’s job performance, according to NBC News exit polling, and majorities said his policies, tariffs included, hurt the economy and that military action in Iran was wrong.
Trump endorsed Hyde-Smith more than a year before the midterms, calling her “100% MAGA,” and he flew to Mississippi to campaign eight days before the election. Kamala Harris and Sens. Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock campaigned for Colom, and Barack Obama appeared in one of his ads.
Hyde-Smith had blocked Colom’s nomination to a federal judgeship during the Biden administration; Colom told NBC News he has since forgiven her. On Monday he blamed the Cook Political Report and other forecasters, which rated his race solidly Republican for much of the cycle, for making it harder to raise money:
At some point, we have to talk about @CookPolitical and other “prognosticators” who had me and other southern candidates labeled as solid R for much of the campaign cycle. They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so…
— Scott Colom (@scott_colom) November 9, 2026
Alaska is now the only Senate race left uncalled, and Democrat Mary Peltola’s lead over Sen. Dan Sullivan has grown past every vote cast for the second Dan Sullivan on the ballot.
