Democratic breakthrough in a Republican stronghold: Mississippi elects its first Black senator in 152 years

Democrat Scott Colom has become the first Black candidate to win a US Senate seat representing Mississippi since 1874.

According to US media reports, Colom defeated Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s US Senate election, becoming the first Black senator to represent the southern state since Reconstruction, the period following the American Civil War.

The result is a stunning upset in the heavily Republican state. It adds to the sweeping defeat Democrats inflicted on President Donald Trump’s party in the midterm elections held on 3 November.

The Mississippi victory gives Democrats 55 seats to the Republicans’ 44 in the 100-member Senate. The winner in Alaska has yet to be determined.

In the House of Representatives, Democrats have so far gained 41 seats, securing a majority of 254 members against 168 Republicans. Thirteen races remain undecided.

Mississippi’s Senate contest was among the last unresolved races following last week’s vote.

State election officials spent more than a week counting ballots in a contest so close that Colom’s lead at times amounted to only a few dozen votes.

The latest results compiled by media outlets showed him ahead by more than 4,500 votes, a margin of 0.5 percentage points.

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

The last Black candidate elected to represent Mississippi in the Senate was Blanche Bruce, a formerly enslaved man, in 1874.