Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate race, first Democrat elected since 1982

Hyde-Smith has conceded as state GOP considers possible litigation

Democrat Scott Colom will be Mississippi’s next U.S. senator, according to a race call by The Associated Press that NPR reported. The call ended a count that stretched well past election night, when early returns had favored incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Colom leads Hyde-Smith by roughly 5,000 votes in the latest results, according to Elise Catrion Gregg of the Gulf States Newsroom and Mississippi Public Broadcasting, who has covered the race for NPR. The win makes Colom the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Mississippi since 1982 and the first African American to represent the state in the chamber since Reconstruction.

Gregg said Colom’s run, announced in late 2025, was viewed as a long shot in a state that has been a Republican stronghold. Hyde-Smith was projected to win for much of the campaign season, she said, even as many Mississippians were aware of Colom’s popularity.

Hyde-Smith has called to concede the race, Gregg said, though neither she nor Republicans in the state had issued an official statement as of the segment. Before the race was called, the state GOP said it would look into legal options and possible litigation and monitor the ballot count closely, according to Gregg. Both candidates had volunteers and lawyers watching the count, and Gregg said she expects some legal action to come out of the result at some point.

Mississippi’s laws leave no set process for challenging the margin: the state has no recount law, and U.S. Senate races there do not go to runoffs, so plurality wins decide the seat, Gregg said.

Colom has said several times during the campaign, especially in recent days, that “the people of Mississippi have spoken,” according to Gregg.

Colom has served as a local district attorney since 2016. His platform centered on affordability, access to health care and saving rural hospitals — an issue Gregg described as a huge deal in Mississippi.

Colom has said his work as a district attorney in an area that leans right informed his push for bipartisanship and his focus on issues that matter to Mississippians across the state, Gregg said. As a prosecutor, one of his big priorities was working to ensure innocent people were not sent to prison — a platform element that helped him win office against the previous district attorney, she said.

Over roughly the past year, Colom ran a statewide campaign, Gregg said: he traveled from the coast to the far north of Mississippi and through the Delta and central Mississippi, talking with voters from both parties.

When President Trump came to Corinth, Mississippi, for a rally in support of Hyde-Smith, Colom waited in line with people trying to get into the event and talked with them about the issues that mattered to them, according to Gregg.

NPR host Scott Detrow described the outcome as a stunning loss for Republicans — a Democratic victory in Mississippi, he said, that was shocking even in the context of “the wave election that seemed to be building,” in a state that “was not on the radar” of many people looking at states that could flip.