Scott Colom Defeats Cindy Hyde-Smith by 4,669 Votes in Mississippi Senate Race to Become State's First Black Senator in 145 Years

The Associated Press called Mississippi's U.S. Senate race on November 11 for Democrat Scott Colom, who defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the closest Senate contest in the country. The call came on Wednesday, eight days after the November 3 election, as counties finished counting absentee and affidavit ballots.

AP totals show Colom with 473,336 votes, or 49.2%, to Hyde-Smith's 468,667 votes, or 48.7% — a margin of 4,669 votes. Independent Ty Pinkins received 20,234 votes, or 2.1%. All 1,736 precincts have reported, and an estimated 98.7% of the vote has been counted. The results remain unofficial: counties must certify their results by November 13, and statewide results are due December 3.

Colom will be Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since Blanche K. Bruce, whose term ended in 1881. Bruce and Hiram Revels, who represented the state during Reconstruction, were both chosen by the state legislature; Colom is the first Black senator from Mississippi elected directly by voters. He is also the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate election in Mississippi since 1982.

Colom, 43, a seventh-generation Mississippian from Columbus, has served since 2016 as district attorney for Mississippi's 16th Judicial District, covering Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee and Oktibbeha counties, after unseating an incumbent who had held the office for nearly three decades in the 2015 election. In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to a federal district judgeship, but Hyde-Smith blocked the nomination in 2023 by withholding her Senate blue slip, and he never received a hearing.

The victory is the Democrats' eighth Senate pickup of the midterm elections. The new Senate will stand at 55 Democrats and 44 Republicans, with only Alaska's Senate race still uncalled. Mississippi is a deeply Republican state: Donald Trump carried it by about 23 points in 2024, and the Cook Political Report had rated this race as Likely Republican.

Mississippi is the only state in the country with no formal recount process, so a candidate disputing the outcome would have to seek one through litigation. The Hyde-Smith campaign has already written to counties asking that ballots and records be preserved for a possible recount or litigation.

Related: Mississippi Senate Race Still Undecided as Affidavit-Ballot Cure and Mail-Ballot Deadlines Both Fall on November 10

Source: Associated Press

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：斯科特·科洛姆。照片：TheMC2012，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Scott Colom. Photo by TheMC2012, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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