Colom’s apparent win in Mississippi Senate race is top Democratic surprise in midterms

Democrats did so unexpectedly well in the recent midterm election, there are plenty of candidates for the most surprising Democratic victory. My #1 pick is Scott Colom’s likely victory over incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Mississippi Senate race.

Colom also is in the running for the most photogenic family. Their smiles must be even wider given the current election result, according to the New York Times.

While Colom only has a 2,536 vote lead over Hyde-Smith, most of the ballots that remain to be counted are in areas that tilted strongly toward Colom. So it appears that Colom is slated to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate in Mississippi since 1982, and the first Black elected to the Senate in that state since 1875.

Overall, election prognosticator Nate Silver did a great job predicting midterm outcomes. On November 1 I shared one of his last election forecasts, which was very close to his final November 2 forecast.

Silver said that the average Senate seats in his election simulations was 53-D, 47-R. The final outcome probably will be 56-D, 44-R. So he underestimated Democratic strength in the Senate races. In the House, Silver predicted 241-D, 194-R. The final outcome probably will be about 259-D, 176-R. So here too Silver underestimated Democratic strength.

But in the Mississippi Senate race, Silver was way off the final result. He only gave Colom a 4.1% chance of defeating Hyde-Smith. In an October 25 Silver Bulletin post, Silver discussed each Senate race, focusing on the difference between his FLIPR model predictions and what Polymarket, a prediction site, is showing. Here’s what Silver said about Louisiana and Mississippi.

Louisiana and Mississippi

Polymarket is more bullish than FLIPR on Democrats’ chances in each state, especially in Mississippi. Neither state has much in the way of reliable polling, and ironically, some of the Mississippi hype may be because one of those fake Wedgewood polls that showed Democrat Scott Colom in a surprisingly close race against Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Hyde-Smith is a mediocre incumbent, having underperformed Mississippi’s partisan baseline in her past Senate races in 2018 and 2020; indeed, her 2018 race required a runoff. And in Louisiana, Julia Letlow is untested as a statewide candidate, although she was elected to Congress from Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District three times by comfortable margins. What makes me really skeptical, though, is that Louisiana and Mississippi are extremely inelastic states, with very few true swing voters. Granted, these are outlier-y states that are tough to model, but a 3-5 percent chance for Democrats instead of 8-13 percent as at Polymarket feels more grounded.

Well, it sure looks like Colom is going to beat the odds and replace Hyde-Smith in the Senate. So how did he pull this off? Here’s excerpts from a November 5 New York Times story, “A Viral Ad and a Trump Rally Visit Helped a Democrat Compete in Mississippi.”

Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Mississippi, went from a long shot months ago to holding a lead of more than 1,700 votes over the Republican incumbent, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, leaving the race too close to call on Thursday.

The tiny margin has given Mississippi an unexpected turn in the national spotlight as the only state other than Alaska where the Senate race has not yet been called. With more than 95 percent of the vote counted, it also sets up a nail-biting wait to learn whether Democrats will expand their already large Senate majority through a state that has not elected a Democrat to the chamber in more than 40 years.

Here’s how the race became this close:

A viral ad propelled the Democrat’s campaign.

In Mississippi, which President Trump won by about 23 points in 2024, Ms. Hyde-Smith was favored to win throughout her campaign. But the deep-red state became an unexpected battleground in October when one of Mr. Colom’s campaign ads went viral.

The roughly 30-second video mocks Ms. Hyde-Smith’s response to a local television anchor’s comment on the rising price of beef: “You have so many proteins to choose from,” she says in a clip.

The video cuts to a man grilling burgers. “Pick another protein?” he says. “I’d rather pick another senator instead.” The message, which aligned with Mr. Colom’s focus on affordability, amplified a gaffe by Ms. Hyde-Smith that turned off voters.

National Democrats noticed. Not long after the ad’s debut, the Senate Majority PAC, the flagship super PAC for Democratic Senate candidates, poured $1.2 million into the race, and later invested another $1 million. The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm also put $500,000 into the state.

…Colom drew Black and white voters, including Republicans.

Mr. Colom, a Black prosecutor running against a white incumbent senator, appealed to Mississippi’s Black residents, a crucial group that typically leans Democratic and accounts for about 37 percent of the state’s population, the largest share of any state. He had the biggest margins in predominantly Black counties, according to election data compiled by The New York Times.

If Mr. Colom wins, he would be Mississippi’s first Black senator since the Reconstruction era, though he downplayed the milestone during his campaign.