Colom won by fewer than 5,000 votes, with a small fraction of ballots still being counted. While he carried Democratic strongholds like Hinds County, home to Jackson, he also flipped traditionally Republican areas such as Forrest County, which President Trump won in 2024 with about 58 percent of the vote.

A district attorney for the state's 16th Judicial District since 2016, Colom built his campaign around accessible healthcare, saving rural hospitals, and affordability. He argued that his experience working in a Republican-majority area taught him the value of bipartisanship.

"I believed that the majority of the Mississippians love our state more than they hate the Democratic party or love the Republican party," Colom said. "They want their kids to have good schools. ... they want to be able to make sure that young people, if they want to stay in Mississippi, can have a job. They want the hospitals to stay open."

Colom's path to victory was anything but smooth. In 2023, President Joe Biden nominated him for a federal judgeship, but the nomination stalled in the Senate after Hyde-Smith blocked it, citing donations from billionaire philanthropist George Soros to an independent PAC that supported Colom's earlier DA run and his opposition to legislation on transgender athletes. Colom denied knowledge of the donations and said his personal views would not affect his work as a judge.

On election night, Hyde-Smith told supporters, "I blocked Scott Colom from being a federal judge, and you blocked him from being U.S. senator." By Wednesday night, she had conceded, saying she respects the decision of Mississippi voters.

Colom's campaign relied heavily on grassroots organizing, with the candidate traveling from the Gulf Coast to the Tennessee border. "We didn't have hundreds of million dollars to come in to spend – we did it going door to door, festival to festival, earning support," he said at a canvassing event on the Mississippi coast in October. "We're gonna shock a lot of people, but I'm not gonna be shocked. The people of Mississippi are behind this campaign: they understand Mississippi matters."

National Democrats eventually took notice. About two weeks before the election, a PAC associated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer donated $1.2 million for advertising. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former President Bill Clinton, and Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia all campaigned with Colom in the final stretch.

Colom said the late attention from national leaders helped, but it was local voters who made the difference. "They understand the power of their vote in ways that we really haven't seen in a long period of time, because if you look at these margins, certainly everything that everybody did made a difference," he told reporters in Jackson days before the race was called.

A viral moment also boosted his profile: after Hyde-Smith suggested during a WLOX interview that people struggling with beef prices could choose a different protein, Colom released a campaign ad suggesting voters pick a different senator instead.

Colom acknowledged the historic nature of his win but said he is focused on the work ahead. "My job is to be a senator that makes it easier for the next African American that has the work ethic, the vision, the values, and they want to be United States senator, make it easier for them," he said. "I am a person that is continuing to show up in the community and take the tough questions and explain my, you know, live my values. And if I do that, it makes it easier for the next person to be judged by their character and not their skin color."

Colom's victory marks one of the most stunning upsets of the 2026 midterm elections and signals a potential shift in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in more than four decades. His campaign's focus on pocketbook issues and rural healthcare resonated with voters across party lines, offering a template for Democrats competing in red states.

Colom will be sworn in when the new Congress convenes in January.