The Scott Colom Mississippi Senate race remained uncalled as of Wednesday afternoon, but the Democratic district attorney held an approximately 2,000-vote lead over Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, with ballots still being counted in several counties.
Colom’s advantage has widened as counting has proceeded, particularly in Hinds County, where he led Hyde-Smith by 60 percentage points. Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, Colom said the arithmetic pointed clearly toward his victory and expressed confidence that he would become the next U.S. senator from Mississippi.
If the lead holds, the result would rank among the most surprising Democratic wins of the 2026 midterm elections, a cycle that already produced a statewide sweep in Texas, Kansas’s first Democratic senator in nearly a century, and an underdog victory in South Carolina.
A nomination blocked, then a race
The contest carries a personal dimension for Colom. In 2023, while serving as a state prosecutor, he was nominated by President Joe Biden for a lifetime federal judgeship. Hyde-Smith blocked the nomination, breaking with her Republican colleague Sen. Roger Wicker, who supported Colom. She cited his opposition to legislation concerning female athletes — an apparent reference to his signing of an open letter against criminalizing gender-affirming care — and a political donation he received four years earlier from a PAC that had been funded by George Soros.
Colom wrote to Hyde-Smith three years ago asking her to reconsider; she declined. He later told The New York Times that without her intervention, he would not have left the federal bench track to run for Senate.
Cost-of-living message and late rallies
Colom made Hyde-Smith’s response to rising costs a central theme of his campaign. One widely shared ad highlighted her comment, when asked about beef prices, that consumers had many proteins to choose from. The spot urged voters to choose a different senator instead.
Until late October, when President Donald Trump traveled to Mississippi to rally for Hyde-Smith, few observers expected a close race. Only three polls had been conducted on the matchup, compared with dozens in higher-profile contests in Michigan and Texas. In the campaign’s final days, former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris both visited Mississippi to boost Democratic support for Colom.
Historical and structural hurdles
A Colom victory would make him the first Democrat to represent Mississippi in the Senate since John C. Stennis, a prominent segregationist, retired in the 1980s. The path was complicated further by Ty Pinkins, the Democratic Senate candidate in 2024, who ran as an Independent this fall and drew nearly 20,000 votes. The GOP’s Senate Leadership Fund also injected more than $1 million into the race on an emergency basis.
Despite those factors, Colom remained positioned to claim victory as counting continued.
