Can Black Voting Power and Trump Fatigue Break Mississippi's Red Wall?

Mississippi's U.S. Senate race has the look of a possible upset on paper. The state has the highest share of Black voters in the country, close to 40%, and it is a rural, agriculture-heavy state that is also among the poorest, where higher prices hit especially hard. Yet President Trump won it by 23 points in 2024, and voting is sharply split along racial lines, meaning too few white voters back Democrats for the party to win statewide.

While hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into Senate contests in conservative-leaning states such as Iowa, Texas, Ohio and Alaska, with a late surge of cash to Kansas, Mississippi has mostly stayed off the radar. Scott Colom, a district attorney and the Democratic nominee, says that is a mistake. "Mississippi has never been a lost cause, we've been a betrayed cause," he told NPR, arguing that national Democrats spent almost nothing in the state while pouring money into others.

Colom is taking on Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, who blocked his nomination to a federal judgeship during the Biden administration. In the closing weeks, both parties have rushed to spend millions in the state. National polling suggests Democratic enthusiasm, higher Black turnout, fewer Republican base voters and some defections have made deeply red races competitive this cycle.

Last Thursday, about a thousand people filled a high school gym in Colom's hometown to hear his closing message alongside former Vice President Kamala Harris. Many attendees voiced optimism about the campaign alongside discouragement with those in power, citing the war in Iran, rising fuel costs and dissatisfaction with Trump's second term. Celestine Rice said people were realizing the need for change. "The moral compass of this country is gone," she said. Harris urged the crowd to turn anger into action, noting the election was 12 days away at the time.

On Monday, Trump, Hyde-Smith and other Mississippi Republicans gathered in Corinth, roughly a hundred miles north, to energize the party's base ahead of next Tuesday's vote. Hyde-Smith framed the contest as socialism versus capitalism and said, "Endorsements don't win elections, votes win elections." Trump said he came because Hyde-Smith was doing well, and warned that supporters sometimes stay home when they think a candidate is safe.

Republicans have spent heavily on ads portraying Colom as too extreme. One, titled "Most Radical," has cost the Hyde-Smith campaign more than $1.3 million, according to AdImpact. Democrats have outspent Republicans this month, about $5 million to $3.2 million, with a message that there is no daylight between the unpopular president and down-ballot Republicans. Colom said voters in the state "want to fire her."

The race also carries symbolic weight as a stand-in for debates about Black political power in the South. After a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year rolled back part of the Voting Rights Act, many Southern Republican-led states moved to redraw congressional maps in ways that reduce opportunities for Black voters to elect their preferred candidates. Mississippi Republicans have signaled interest in redrawing state legislative and judicial districts after the midterms. Colom said, "The voters have to pick the leaders, not the leaders pick the voters."

History remains a hurdle. Mississippi last sent a Democrat to the Senate in the early 1980s, and its last successful Black statewide candidate won during Reconstruction. Even in the 2018 blue wave, Hyde-Smith won a special election for this seat by roughly 7 points.

Still, an anti-incumbent streak in polls and primaries, plus a notable rise in Black turnout in states with early voting, has both parties anxiously awaiting results on Nov. 3. Ashley Kennedy Shelton, who runs a nonpartisan civic engagement group in Louisiana, said voters across the spectrum are frustrated. "I think you're going to see voters truly show up, because folks are just tired," she said.