Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, the Associated Press projected on Wednesday after more than a week of ballot counting, and Hyde-Smith conceded the race on Wednesday evening. “While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” she said in a video posted to social media. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
The margin was the closest in any Senate race this year. With about 99 percent of the vote counted, Colom led with 49.18 percent to Hyde-Smith’s 48.72 percent, a lead of 4,669 votes out of more than 950,000 cast, and the outcome turned on absentee and provisional ballots counted in the days after Election Day. Mississippi certifies its results on December 3, there is no automatic recount procedure in the state, and lawyers for the Senate Republican campaign arm have already demanded that election officials preserve records and provisional ballots, a move Colom’s lawyers called unlawful.
Colom, 43, a district attorney, becomes the first Democrat to win a Mississippi Senate seat since 1982 and the first Black senator from the state since the Reconstruction era. Hyde-Smith, who was endorsed by President Trump, had been appointed to the Senate in 2018 and won a full term in 2020 by about 10 percentage points. Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points in 2024, and the Cook Political Report rated the race Likely Republican going into the election.
The result is the eighth Senate seat Democrats have flipped in this cycle. It moves the new Senate to 55 seats for the Democratic caucus, 53 Democrats plus two independents who caucus with them, to 44 for Republicans, with one race, in Alaska, still uncalled; there, Democrat Mary Peltola has pulled ahead of Republican Senator Dan Sullivan in recent days. The new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027.