Scott Colom has defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, 49.2% to 48.7%, after a count lasting over a week. The margin was 4,585 votes. Democrats have now flipped eight Republican Senate seats and will hold at least 55 seats in the new chamber.
The Mississippi Result
Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, is the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Mississippi in more than 40 years. He is also the first Black senator elected by the state’s voters and the first Black person elected to statewide office there since Reconstruction. That happened in a state Trump carried by nearly 23 percentage points in 2024.
The narrow margin explains the long wait for the result, not its political scale. Mississippi was supposed to be safe Republican territory. Instead, an incumbent lost, and the Democratic wave reached another state Republicans expected to keep. Colom’s campaign found a particularly sharp line of attack when Hyde-Smith advised people facing higher beef prices to “choose another protein.” His response was to ask voters to choose another senator.
Losing an incumbent in Mississippi, on top of the other flips, is a collapse across very different states.
The Senate and Ukraine
Mississippi is the eighth Republican-held Senate seat Democrats have taken in these midterms. The party had already secured a majority before this race was called; Colom’s victory extends it to at least 55 seats. Republicans cannot dismiss this as one bad race or one unusual candidate.
Hyde-Smith’s record on Ukraine is worth stating accurately. In February 2024, she voted against a $60 billion aid proposal, arguing that Americans’ own security should be prioritised before more taxpayer money went to Ukraine. In April, she changed course and supported the final aid package. Her defeat is therefore not the removal of a senator who opposed every Ukraine aid vote. A Republican incumbent whose first response to a major Ukraine package was to vote no lost in an election that has substantially strengthened the Democrats’ position in the Senate.