Democrat Scott Colom has won election to the United States Senate from Mississippi, the Associated Press called on Wednesday, November 11, narrowly defeating Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith after more than a week of counting and ending two long droughts at once: he will be the first Black senator Mississippi has sent to Washington since Reconstruction, and the first Democrat the state has elected to the Senate since 1982.

Source: Associated Press via NPR

The race was the closest Senate contest in the country this year. After the final election-night update, which arrived from Pike County at 3:03 a.m. Eastern on November 4, Colom led by just 43 votes. Counties then spent eight days counting outstanding absentee ballots and affidavit, or provisional, ballots, and by the time the AP made its call on Wednesday his lead had grown to 4,669 votes. Figures reported as the call was made put Colom at 49.18 percent of the vote to about 48.72 percent for Hyde-Smith, with about 95 percent of the vote counted.

Hyde-Smith conceded on Wednesday evening, shortly after the AP call, in a video posted to social media. "While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters," she said. "I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state." Hyde-Smith, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, had been appointed to the Senate in 2018 to fill the seat vacated by Thad Cochran and won a special election later that year.

"It's something that we did" — victory night at Tougaloo College

Speaking to supporters at the historically Black Tougaloo College campus in Jackson, an emotional Colom paid tribute to his faith and to the work of his campaign. "For months and months, I've been telling everybody everywhere I go that we're gonna win this election," he said. "But every time I said it, I pointed out that the people were gonna give me too much credit for it. Because it's not something that I did, y'all. It's something that we did!" Reporters covering the race described the result as driven by a surge of Black voter turnout across the state.

Colom, 43, is the district attorney for Mississippi's 16th Judicial District, based in Columbus in the north of the state. He won the Democratic nomination in the March 10 primary against Priscilla Williams-Till and Albert Littell, and in November faced Hyde-Smith and an independent challenge from Ty Pinkins, the previous Democratic nominee. When he is sworn in, Colom will be Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since Blanche K. Bruce, who was elected in 1874 and left office in 1881; the state's other Reconstruction-era Black senator was Hiram Revels.

How the upset happened: prices, proteins and a late surge of attention

Colom made the cost of living the centerpiece of his campaign in a rural, agriculture-heavy state hit hard by rising prices, branding his opponent "Cindy High-Prices." The campaign's defining exchange came after Hyde-Smith, a cattle rancher and former state agriculture commissioner, responded to a question about high beef prices earlier this year by saying that "you have so many other proteins to choose from." Colom's team turned the remark into a viral advertisement in which voters expressed disbelief at the suggestion to "pick another protein" — and the ad answered that it was time to "pick another senator." By contrast, Hyde-Smith rarely spoke to reporters in Washington and kept a minimal presence in the state.

Few forecasters gave Colom a chance. The Cook Political Report rated the race Likely Republican, and polling aggregators put his chances below 10 percent in a state President Trump carried by 23 points in 2024. Unlike most contested Senate races that flipped this year, Mississippi drew little national money or attention until the closing days, when Trump held a rally in the final week and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock and other Democrats visited. Colom told NPR earlier this month that the late investment underlined his argument: "The reality is, Mississippi has never been a lost cause, we've been a betrayed cause. The Democratic Party has not been trying to win Mississippi. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars in other states. They spent almost nothing in Mississippi."

What happens next

The race call comes ahead of formal certification: Mississippi's Secretary of State's office has said county officials administer the count and had until November 13 to submit certified results. Colom is listed as senator-elect and is due to take office when the new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027. His victory gives Democrats at least 55 Senate seats in the new Congress, with the Alaska race the only Senate contest still undecided — a majority that will shape the new Congress's agenda and its oversight of the federal government, including the immigration enforcement policies that readers across the Punjabi diaspora have been following closely through this election.