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Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, CNN projected on Wednesday, more than a week after Election Day.
The win adds a seat to the Democratic Senate majority in a state President Donald Trump carried by more than 22 percentage points in 2024.
Colom, a district attorney in northern Mississippi, will be the state’s first Democratic senator since segregationist John Stennis retired in 1989.
He will also be the first Black person elected to statewide office in Mississippi since the Reconstruction era, and the first Black senator from the state since that period.
The count stayed unsettled for days. At 6 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, with about 95.6% of votes tallied, Colom led by 43 votes, 462,821 to 462,778.
Independent Ty Pinkins had 19,935. By mid-afternoon that day the margin was 65 votes, in incomplete and unofficial results, with nearly 1 million ballots cast.
Neither candidate claimed victory on election night. Hyde-Smith told supporters, “I assure you I will continue to be your U.S. senator,” and said Democrats had worked hard but “there wasn’t enough of them.”
Colom told his crowd, “We’re gonna win,” and said he was confident once all ballots were counted.
Hyde-Smith’s campaign said the margin was “measured in just dozens of votes” and that outstanding affidavit and absentee ballots “still must be processed and verified under Mississippi law.” Most forecasters had rated the race as safely Republican.
The delay came mainly from ballots that could be counted only after Election Day.
Mississippi accepts mail-in ballots that arrive late if they were postmarked by Election Day. Affidavit, or provisional, ballots must be checked before they are counted.
Some are cast by voters who lacked identification at the polls, and those count only if the voter later provides it to county officials.
Others are cast by voters listed as inactive, which can be resolved once officials confirm eligibility.
Voters had until Nov. 10 to resolve provisional ballots, and counties had until Friday, Nov. 13, to certify results. Ballots also remained uncounted in Hinds County, a Democratic stronghold and the state’s most populous, and in Coast counties where Hyde-Smith held an edge.
Colom’s lead grew steadily. It passed 1,700 votes on Thursday and reached about 2,500 by Friday. On Thursday, Mississippi GOP chairman Mike Hurst estimated about 20,000 ballots were outstanding and said, “This race is far from being over.”
Both campaigns deployed lawyers. “We got an army of lawyers,” Colom said Friday. The state Democratic Party filed a court challenge Tuesday night over problems at DeSoto County precincts, including delayed openings, long waits and shortages of regular and affidavit ballots. It withdrew the complaint on Wednesday, Nov. 4.
Mississippi has no automatic recount for federal races, so a court would have to order one. Emily Ommundsen, a University of Mississippi political science professor, said she was hesitant to draw conclusions given the narrow margin.
She said she expected court-ordered decisions on which ballots to count if the gap stayed this close.
By about 3:10 p.m. Wednesday, with roughly 98.6% of the estimated vote counted, Colom led 471,757 to 467,353, a margin of 4,404 votes. An hour later the unofficial tally was 472,188 to 467,603, a lead of 4,585.
County officials were still processing provisional, absentee and military ballots.
The Colom campaign released a memo Wednesday saying Hyde-Smith had “no path to victory.” It said about 7,100 ballots remained uncounted, roughly 6,400 affidavit ballots and 700 absentee ballots.
Citing historical rejection rates of 55% to 65% for affidavit ballots, it estimated only about 5,000 more votes would be added. It said Hyde-Smith would need nearly 90% of them to close the gap.
The memo put Colom’s lead at 5,568 votes, a figure that differs from the unofficial tallies above.
Hyde-Smith was appointed in 2018 to replace the retiring Thad Cochran. She won a special election that year and a full term in 2020, both against Mike Espy. She was the first woman elected to federal office in Mississippi.
Mississippi’s only previous Black U.S. senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce, were chosen by the state Legislature in 1870 and 1875. The last Democrat elected to the Senate from the state won in 1982.
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