Washington — Democrat Scott Colom defeated GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Mississippi Senate race, CBS News projects, delivering Democrats an eighth flipped Senate seat after the dramatic race had been up in the air for days.
Colom, 43, is a district attorney and seventh-generation Mississippian. He campaigned on cost-of-living and healthcare issues, while pledging to deliver for the Magnolia State where he argued Hyde-Smith hasn’t. And he saw support from top surrogates like former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris, who joined Colom on the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
Hyde-Smith, 67, has been in the Senate since 2018, and was the first woman elected to represent Mississippi in Congress.
The race became surprisingly competitive in deep-red Mississippi, heating up in the final weeks of the campaign. National Democrats announced last month that they were investing in ad spending in the race for the first time, and the Cook Political Report changed its rating from solidly Republican to leaning Republican, as the headwinds that faced Republicans across the map — an unpopular war in Iran and persistent affordability issues — even made their way to reliably red states.
The race appeared extremely close the day after Election Day: With about 96% of the vote in, just a few dozen votes separated the candidates. But Colom’s lead strengthened in the days that followed.
Heading into Election Day, the race appeared to be a steep uphill climb for Democrats. President Trump won the state by 20 points in 2024, and the state hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. But the contest’s competitiveness in the final stages of the campaign was illustrative of the broader political environment, which put seats on the map that Democrats wouldn’t have dreamed of flipping at the beginning of the cycle.
With the projected victory, Democrats add yet another seat to their majority, marking their eighth flip after the party won seats in North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and Maine.
In January, Democrats will control at least 55 Senate seats to Republicans’ 44, with Alaska’s Senate race still a toss-up.
