OXFORD, Miss. — Voters in Oxford and the rest of Lafayette County sided with Democrat Scott Colom by just 200 votes in the U.S. Senate race he was declared to have won Wednesday, eight days after the polls closed.
Final county numbers show Colom with 8,525 votes to 8,325 for Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a split of 49.43% to 48.27%. Independent Ty Pinkins drew 373 votes in the county.
Hyde-Smith had a slim lead in the county among ballots cast on Election Day itself. Colom made up the gap and moved ahead once in-person absentee, mailed absentee and affidavit ballots were added to the tally.
Statewide, the outcome came into focus late Wednesday afternoon after Jackson County officials reported 2,173 more votes. With that batch in, Colom held a 4,669-vote edge, with 962,237 ballots tallied statewide. Provisional ballots slowed the count across Mississippi, many of them cast by voters who had been shifted to inactive status.
Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, is the first Black senator Mississippi voters have sent to Washington since the Reconstruction era, as well as the first Democrat to win one of the state’s Senate seats since 1982. Hyde-Smith, in office since 2018, phoned him Wednesday afternoon to concede.
Colom marked the win with supporters Wednesday night at Tougaloo College in Jackson, where he talked about a campaign that began with few donors and sparse crowds at early town halls, and pledged to serve every Mississippian regardless of how they voted.
Lafayette County’s close split mirrored how tight the contest was across the state, where a final call took more than a week of counting.
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