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It took eight days of counting, and in the end it came down to about 4,500 votes. On Wednesday, November 11, media outlets finally called the last great uncalled race of America's 2026 midterm elections: Democrat Scott Colom had defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, becoming the state's first Black senator since 1874 — and the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there in 44 years.
Hyde-Smith conceded on Wednesday evening in a brief video posted online. Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, will be sworn in when the new Congress begins in January. The result is one of the most striking upsets in modern American politics — in a state Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points just two years ago.
A race that refused to end
The election itself was held on November 3. For more than a week afterwards, nobody knew who had won. The gap between the two candidates hovered around 2,000 votes, and at times Colom led by only a few dozen. Local election officials spent days processing absentee ballots and affidavit ballots — provisional ballots, as they are known in Mississippi — while talk of a possible recount grew. CNN projected Colom as the winner on Wednesday, and the Associated Press followed with its own call.
The final figures, as tabulated by the media, put Colom ahead by more than 4,500 votes, or about half a percentage point. CBS's figures had Colom on 49.2% of the vote to Hyde-Smith's 48.7%, with an independent candidate on 2.1%. Mississippi has no automatic recount law, so the result will stand unless a court orders a recount in response to a lawsuit.
Who is Scott Colom?
Colom is a seventh-generation Mississippian who serves as district attorney for the state's 16th Judicial District, based in Columbus. He campaigned on the message Democrats ran on across the country this year: the cost of living and health care. He had never held statewide office, and the Cook Political Report had rated Hyde-Smith as the favourite to win.
Hyde-Smith, 67, was appointed to the Senate in 2018 to fill the seat left by Thad Cochran, and won a special election later that year. She had consistently led in opinion polls. That a challenger with no statewide profile beat an incumbent in a state this red — and by a margin this thin — is what makes the result so remarkable.
152 years of history
The historic weight of the result is hard to overstate. The last Black senator elected from Mississippi was Blanche Bruce, a man born into slavery who was elected in 1874, during Reconstruction — the period after the Civil War when formerly enslaved people briefly held political power in the South. Bruce served from 1875 to 1881. He and Hiram Revels, who served a partial term before him, were the only Black senators Mississippi ever sent to Washington — until now.
Mississippi has the largest share of Black residents of any American state, and a history shaped by slavery, segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. It went nearly 150 years without sending a Black senator to Washington. Colom's victory closes that gap.
It also breaks a second long streak. Colom is the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Mississippi since John Stennis in 1982 — more than four decades ago. The state had not sent a Democrat to the Senate in 44 years.
What it means for the Senate
The result widens the Democrats' advantage in the Senate to 55–44, with one race — in Alaska — still undecided. Mississippi was the eighth Senate seat Democrats have flipped from Republicans in this year's midterm elections, giving them a minimum 55-seat majority going into 2027.
That matters because the midterms were, above all, a verdict on the cost of living. Democrats campaigned on prices and health care, and the message evidently landed even in the most Republican states. Mississippi is not a state that has become Democratic — a margin of half a point in a state Trump won by 23 points suggests a closely divided electorate, not a realignment. But it is a state where a Democrat just won, and that changes the arithmetic of the Senate for the next two years.
With a 55-seat majority, Democrats will control the Senate's committees and its agenda when the new Congress convenes in January — including the power to hold hearings and set the terms of debate on everything from prices to foreign policy.
What happens next
Colom will take his seat in January, when the new Congress is sworn in. The immediate question is whether Hyde-Smith or her supporters challenge the result in court — Mississippi's lack of an automatic recount law does not prevent a legal challenge, though the margin, while tiny, is not the kind of margin that recounts usually overturn.
The longer question is what the result says about American politics. A Black district attorney from Columbus, Mississippi, running on the price of groceries and the cost of a doctor's visit, has just done what no Democrat has done in his state for 44 years and no Black Mississippian has done since 1874. He did it by 4,500 votes out of nearly a million cast. In a democracy, that is both how close elections are — and how much they can change.
For more on the courts and American politics, see how a US court cleared the way to summon India's national security adviser, and why US gas prices just fell below $4 a gallon. According to Reuters and USA Today, Colom was projected the winner on November 11, 2026, by a margin of about half a percentage point.