Democrat Scott Colom wins Mississippi 2026 Senate race defeating Cindy Hyde-Smith, flipping seat in the ultimate upset. Is this final or are they still counting?
It's final: Scott Colom, the Democratic district attorney, has won Mississippi's U.S. Senate seat, the Associated Press has called the race, and incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith conceded Wednesday evening.
Answer from Mary's digital twin. Checkmark turns Green once she confirms it.
spio.comCalled, conceded and certified pending
The AP declared Colom the winner after several counties reported updated results, including those of last-to-count provisional ballots. He led Hyde-Smith by 43 votes following the final election night update. After more than a week of counting outstanding, absentee ballots and affidavit ballots, Colom won the closest Senate race in the country by just a few thousand votes. Hyde-Smith said in a video statement, "While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters."
November 13 is the deadline for the state to certify this election. One caveat worth watching: there is no automatic recount procedure in the state, and Hyde-Smith's narrow loss is likely to spark legal action. Lawyers for the Senate GOP's campaign arm have already demanded that the state's election officials preserve records and provisional ballots. Lawyers for Colom called the move "unlawful."
One more first
Colom will also be the first Black senator ever elected directly by Mississippians. The state's two previous Black senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, were chosen by the legislature in 1870 and 1875 respectively. That is a distinction that gets lost in the noise of the margin, but it matters: every Mississippian who voted for Colom cast a ballot that none of their predecessors ever had the chance to cast for a candidate like this.
Beyond its historical significance, Colom's win represents a major victory over Mississippi's voting policies, which are among the most restrictive in the nation.
Follow-ups
How were state's two previous Black senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce elected by legislature? What does that mean?
Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce did not win a popular vote the way Scott Colom just did: before 1913, no American voter cast a ballot directly for a U.S. senator, because the original Constitution gave that power to state legislatures, not the public.
Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce did not win a popular vote the way Scott Colom just did: before 1913, no American voter cast a ballot directly for a U.S. senator, because the original Constitution gave that power to state legislatures, not the public.
spio.comHow the Senate worked before 1913
From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were indirectly elected by state legislatures. The voters of a state chose their state legislature, and those legislators then chose who would go to Washington as a senator. The 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, established the direct election of U.S. senators by the citizens of each state, effectively replacing the previous system. So when Hiram Revels and Bruce went to the Senate, millions of Black Mississippians had no say at all, because they weren't voting for senators, nobody was.
How Hiram Revels got the seat
Hiram Revels was a freeborn man from North Carolina who rose to prominence as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and then as a Mississippi state senator. In January 1870, Revels presented the opening prayer in the state legislature, and that prayer, described as one of the most impressive and eloquent ever delivered in the Mississippi Senate Chamber, made Revels a United States senator. The legislators who heard it were so moved that they put him forward for the seat. Revels was selected in 1870 to fill the seat vacated by Jefferson Davis, who had left to become president of the defunct Confederacy. Revels made history as the first Black American to be elected to the United States Senate, but he served only 13 months.
How Blanche K. Bruce got the seat
In Bolivar County, Mississippi, Bruce encouraged Black political participation as the county sheriff, tax collector, and superintendent of education, and that local political base catapulted him to a U.S. Senate seat. Five years after Revels, the Mississippi legislature, still under the control of Republicans swept into office as part of post-Civil War Reconstruction, elected Blanche K. Bruce, making him the first Black American elected to a full Senate term. At his swearing-in ceremony, the state's white senior senator refused to accompany his new colleague to the podium.
Why this makes Colom's win different in kind
By forming coalitions with pro-Union white people, Republicans took control of the state legislatures during Reconstruction, and at the time, state legislatures elected the members of the U.S. Senate. During Reconstruction, only the state legislature of Mississippi elected any Black senators. Both Revels and Bruce needed only a majority in that one chamber of lawmakers, not a majority of Mississippi voters.
Colom won a statewide popular election, running in a state that is majority-white, against a sitting incumbent, in a cycle that wasn't supposed to favor Democrats. Revels and Bruce were giants, but they were chosen by legislators. Colom was chosen by the people, and that is a structurally different thing.
The race is still being counted, but if Scott Colom's lead holds, it will be one of the most consequential upsets in modern American political history: the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since Reconstruction, and the first Democrat the state has sent to the Senate in more than 40 years.
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