Democrat Scott Colom held a narrow advantage over Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith late Friday afternoon, leaving the incumbent facing a possible upset in a state that last elected a Democratic senator in 1982. Decision Desk HQ’s count put Colom ahead by 2,734 votes, with thousands of ballots still uncounted. Before voting ended Tuesday, the election forecaster had assigned Hyde-Smith a 91 percent probability of victory.
The preliminary results showed substantial Democratic gains in counties Hyde-Smith carried comfortably in 2020. Colom led by about 6 percentage points in DeSoto County, outside Memphis, where she previously won by 16 points. In coastal Harrison County, her advantage had fallen from 17 points six years ago to roughly 4 points. DeSoto also recorded a roughly 30-point Democratic shift from the 2024 presidential election, when President Trump won it by 24 points.
Colom improved Democratic vote totals even in strongly Republican areas. In Pearl River County, he received approximately 4,000 votes, representing 24 percent of the preliminary count. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley received 2,400 votes, or 22 percent, there in 2023, while former Vice President Kamala Harris took 16 percent in 2024. In DeSoto, Colom’s roughly 28,100 votes approached twice Presley’s total.
A national climate favorable to Democrats helped Colom, while his campaign connected concerns about rising prices directly to the incumbent. After Hyde-Smith suggested shoppers select a less expensive protein, Colom urged them to “pick another senator.” Separately, New Southern Majority, a super PAC established by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s political advocacy arm, spent just under $1 million targeting about 200,000 Republicans, according to Brannon Miller, whose firm, Chism Strategies, managed the effort.
Miller said those messages concentrated almost exclusively on criticism of Hyde-Smith over the Iran war, gasoline costs, tariffs and support for data centers. He interpreted Colom’s gains in Republican counties as evidence of crossover voting. He also pointed to opposition to a DeSoto data center, where residents have complained about persistent noise, as a significant explanation for the county’s shift.
DeSoto County Democratic Party Chair Deborah Williams agreed that the data center dispute may have weakened Hyde-Smith, but placed greater weight on organizing. Campaign workers knocked on nearly 70,000 doors and sought to increase absentee voting, she said. Williams said Colom’s “Mississippi Matters” message particularly appealed to younger voters. Visiting precincts on Election Day, she saw young people waiting in the rain, some for two or three hours.
Efforts to mobilize Black voters also accompanied higher participation. Preliminary figures indicated that majority-Black counties cast about 10 percent more votes than in the 2023 gubernatorial election. The New York Times estimated that Colom received support from 91 percent of Black voters. Its initial estimates showed Democratic gains across demographic groups compared with 2024, including a 19-point reduction in the Republican advantage among white voters.
Arekia Bennett-Scott, executive director of Mississippi Votes, said years of youth organizing gained added urgency from efforts to redraw the state’s congressional districts. Many students viewed redistricting as threatening Black political representation, she said, prompting a May rally in Jackson and campus organizing. She emphasized that their engagement extended beyond a particular candidate or party.
The Times estimated that Mississippi voters younger than 30 favored Colom by 62 percent to 33 percent, a 44-point shift toward Democrats from 2024. With the outcome still unresolved Friday, local organizers described the close contest as evidence of competitiveness that had been developing in Mississippi for years.
