Democrat Scott Colom won a stunning upset in Mississippi's US Senate race on Wednesday after days of counting, US media projected, defeating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith to become the Southern state's first Black senator since the Reconstruction era that followed the US Civil War.

It was one of the final outstanding races to be called since Tuesday's elections, in which Democrats overwhelmed Republicans to win control of both chambers of the US Congress.

Mississippi officials took days to count ballots in a race that was so tight that Colom at times led by only a few dozen votes.

A spokesman for Hyde-Smith confirmed that she has called Colom to concede.

Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, became the first Democrat to win a Mississippi Senate seat since John Stennis in 1982.

Hyde-Smith, 67, who was first elected in 2018, had consistently led in opinion polls in a state that US President Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024. Trump campaigned in Mississippi for Hyde-Smith near the end of the race.

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer celebrated on social media.

“Scott Colom is the only person who could’ve gotten this done,” Schumer wrote. “Along with his staff and volunteers, Scott ran the campaign of a lifetime and re-imagined what’s possible for Democrats in the South.”

Colom told Reuters in an October interview that Mississippi voters felt "betrayed" by Trump policies like the war in Iran, which has driven up fuel prices.

On the campaign trail, he focused on reaching voters through town halls as well as visits to public housing, festivals and food trucks, Colom said. "We did it the hard way, the grassroots way," he said.

October rallies with Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey boosted Colom's campaign.

The last Black candidate elected to the Senate in Mississippi was former slave Blanche Bruce in 1874.

In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked Colom's nomination by former President Joe Biden to serve as a federal district judge in northern Mississippi, citing his position on transgender issues. Mississippi's other US senator, Republican Roger Wicker, supported his nomination. (Reuters/AP)



Edited by Cecil Wong