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By Sam Stevenson
Associate News Editor
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Democrat Scott Colom flipped eight Mississippi counties won by Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2020, according to county-level returns available when The Associated Press (AP) called the Senate race Wednesday.
The geographic shift helps explain one of the 2026 midterms’ biggest upsets and the end of a 44-year Democratic losing streak in Mississippi Senate elections.
Mississippi will send its first popularly elected Black senator to Washington, while Republicans lose a seat in a state President Donald Trump carried by 23 points two years earlier.
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Why It Matters
Colom, a local prosecutor, led Hyde-Smith by 4,669 votes out of 962,237 counted when AP called the race Wednesday, a margin of about half-a-percentage point.
His victory also strengthened Democratic control of the Senate for the remainder of Trump’s second term. It demonstrated that the party could compete well beyond Mississippi’s established Democratic strongholds.
Key Points
- The counties that flipped were DeSoto, Forrest, Grenada, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Madison, Winston and Yalobusha.
- No county moved from the Democratic column in 2020 to the Republican column in 2026.
- Newsweek’s map compares the latest contest with Mississippi’s previous election for the same Senate seat, rather than the 2024 presidential vote.
- Several county returns remained below 99 percent of the expected vote, meaning individual totals may change before certification.
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Eight Counties Changed Sides
The map separates genuine party switches from counties that simply remained loyal to one side.
A county was classified as having flipped blue when Hyde-Smith defeated Democrat Mike Espy there in 2020, but Colom received the most votes in the 2026 return.
Mississippi’s amended certification shows Hyde-Smith won statewide six years ago with 709,511 votes, against 578,691 for Espy and 23,152 for Libertarian Jimmy Edwards.
The new coalition crossed sharply different parts of the state.
DeSoto County, on the Tennessee border near Memphis, one of Mississippi’s main growth centers, which added 6.8 percent to its population between 2020 and 2025. It moved from 43,171 votes for Hyde-Smith and 31,115 for Espy to a 3,323-vote Colom advantage.
In university-centered Lafayette County, the Democrat prevailed by 200 votes after the Republican incumbent carried it by 1,321 in the previous contest.
Census figures show nearly half of adults hold at least a bachelor’s degree in Lafayette County, which contains Oxford and the University of Mississippi.
Colom also overturned a 4,996-vote Republican advantage in Forrest County, winning the 2026 return there by 2,418.
Forrest County is named for Confederate general and first Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest, while its county seat, Hattiesburg, became a major center of Mississippi’s voting-rights movement.
Madison County, part of the Jackson metropolitan area, has grown 6.6 percent since 2020 and has one of Mississippi’s most highly educated populations. It produced another notable crossover, shifting from Hyde-Smith by 4,664 to Colom by 471.
Smaller changes proved valuable in a race decided statewide by fewer than 5,000 ballots.
Colom led by 347 in Grenada County, 90 in Yalobusha County and 297 in Winston County.
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Grenada County, situated where the Mississippi Delta meets the state’s hill country, was the birthplace of civil-rights organizer Amzie Moore and education-reform governor William Winter.
Yalobusha County has deep railroad roots: the state’s first labor union was organized in Water Valley in 1869, and railroad engineer Casey Jones belonged to a local union.
Winston County contains Nanih Waiya, the ancient mound regarded in Choctaw tradition as the tribe’s birthplace and returned to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians in 2008.
Colom's widest margin among the eight flips came in Jefferson Davis County, where he finished 1,449 votes ahead after Hyde-Smith narrowly carried the county in 2020.
Jefferson Davis County is named for the Confederate president. However, it was also home to the Prentiss Normal and Industrial Institute, which expanded educational opportunities for generations of Black Mississippians.
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How Colom Built the Winning Coalition
Flipped counties formed only part of the Democrat’s route.
Strong margins in the Delta and around Jackson supplied the foundation, while improved competitiveness elsewhere prevented the incumbent from building the Republican advantage needed to offset those votes.
Colom exceeded 67 percent across the heavily Democratic Jackson and Delta region, the strongest performance there by a Democratic candidate for Senate, governor or president in at least a decade, AP found.
Hyde-Smith, meanwhile, ran more than 10 percentage points behind Trump’s 2024 share in the Republican-friendly Northeast and Southeast.
Late-counted ballots reinforced that pattern. Colom won all 12 county updates issued Wednesday, including the final addition from Jackson County that persuaded AP he had secured an insurmountable lead.
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What the Candidates Said
Speaking at Tougaloo College late Wednesday, Colom framed his promise in personal terms.
"My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that, first, I’m going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated," he said. "I’m going to treat your parents the way I want my parents to be treated. I’m going to treat your future the way I want my future to be."
Hyde-Smith acknowledged the result in a video posted on X after more than a week of counting.
"While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters," she said.
"I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state."
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What Happens Next
Mississippi has no automatic statewide recount triggered by a narrow margin.
Counties must complete certification before the state publishes final results, and the Secretary of State said local election officials remain the best source while that process continues.
For Colom, the next transition runs from Lowndes County prosecutor to the Senate chamber, where his election adds another Democratic vote and writes a new chapter in Mississippi’s political history.
For more analysis on the numbers shaping U.S. politics and the 2026 midterms, sign up for Newsweek's Midterms Monitor newsletter.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story.
Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Anna Commander and James Debens
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sam Stevenson and James Debens
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