Democrats last won a Senate race in Mississippi in 1982. Trump still came to help.
President Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Mississippi on 26 October for Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. She faces Democrat Scott Colom on 3 November.
What happened
President Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Corinth, Mississippi, to support Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a week before the vote. Polls show her Democratic rival, Scott Colom, closing the gap.
President Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Corinth, Mississippi, on for Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. She is a Republican and has been a senator since 2018. On she faces Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney, the chief public prosecutor of a local area. The week before, Trump told reporters: “If I need to get her over the top, I would go there“.
A Democrat has not won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982, and Trump won the state by about 23 points in 2024. In the week before the Cook Political Report, which rates US races, moved this one from solid Republican to likely Republican. Polls show Colom closing the gap, but The New York Times says Hyde-Smith is still the favourite.
Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock have campaigned for Colom, and Barack Obama recorded an advert for him. Outside spending groups from both parties have put money into the race. On Trump said of Hyde-Smith: “She’s up in the polls. She’s not losing“.
The official sample ballot has three names for the Senate: Colom, Hyde-Smith and Ty Pinkins, who stands for no party. With three names, the leader can finish with less than half of the votes. In a 2018 special election for this same seat, Hyde-Smith had less than half in the first round and won a second vote three weeks later.
Deadline for County Election Commissions to transmit to the Secretary of State their counties’ General/Special Election returns, including their certified recap sheets and the total number of votes cast in the county for each candidate.
Mississippi Secretary of State, 2026 Elections Calendar
That deadline is . The same calendar lists a second vote on , if needed, for judges and school boards, and does not name the US Senate in that line. If Colom wins, Democrats take a Senate seat in a state they have not won since 1982.
Sources: nytimes.com
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a sitting US senator ran again for the same seat in a state where the other party had not won a Senate race for more than 40 years. We found four such races from 2014 to 2024, in Mississippi, Maryland and Kansas. Each time the result was clear on election night, with no second vote.
Show the other 2 cases
The Read
All four senators got the most votes, and all four won more than half, with 53.1% to 65.8%. The closest race was Kansas in 2014, when Pat Roberts faced Greg Orman, who stood for no party, and won by 10.6 points. Hyde-Smith has a third name on her ballot too. In the first round of the 2018 special election she had 389,995 votes to 386,742 for Democrat Mike Espy, less than half of the total.
There are reasons for doubt. Two of the four races were in Kansas, and only Maryland in 2022 took place while a president from the senator’s own party was in office, as this vote does. For Maryland, The Guardian puts the last Republican win in 1980, while Larry Hogan, a Republican former governor of the state, spoke of 1986. National polls this month lean to the Democrats: a Marist poll of 19 to had Democrats on 52% and Republicans on 44% for Congress.
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