I bet all the people that thought "my vote doesn't matter anyway, there's like a million people voting, my vote has no influence at all in the big picture" are feeling real great about themselves now.

Even if the Dem loses this, I think a race like this in Mississippi can really affect voter turnout in future elections. My bet is that there's quite a few Dem voters in those deep red states that just don't bother voting because they think it's futile. After a race like this there could come quite a bit of those out to vote when they see it's possible to actually tip states like this.

He's world famous now, so yeah...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/11/03/us/elections/results-mississippi-us-senate.html

1,138 votes ahead as of 18 minutes ago.

EDIT: Looking at that map, the western areas, which IIRC from looking at past demographic maps are the more-black parts of Mississippi, are the areas that went for him.

searches

Yeah:

https://mcimaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Mississippi-LD-by-Race.png

One point that Nate Silver was talking about in his post-election analysis—not speaking about Mississippi in particular— was that there was strong turnout from black voters in 2026, like 80% of that typical in a presidential-year election. By midterm election standards, that's good. So that might have been enough to get him over the top.

Does kind of highlight how it's important to go out and vote...

EDIT2: Ah, yeah. Someone else in this thread linked to a transcript off NPR, and they were saying the same thing about black voter turnout elsewhere in the text, there specific to the Scott Colom result:

https://www.npr.org/2026/11/04/nx-s1-6028618/votes-are-still-being-counted-in-mississippi-u-s-senate-race

What about the demographics of Mississippi made this possible?

FOWLER: Well, Mississippi is a state that voted for President Trump by 24 points, but at the same time, it has the highest share of Black voters in the country, closer to 40%. And you had, like you see in other places in the South, a surge in Black voter turnout. You had maybe a little bit less Republican turnout of people staying home that would normally support the Republican candidate, and you just had this shift and this swing where we are now talking about dozens of votes separating Mississippi electing the first Black senator since Reconstruction.

goes looking

Apparently the last Democratic senator from Mississippi was John C. Stennis, but his entry into office predated the Civil Rights Act and the Southern Strategy and party realignment; he was a product of the Fifth Party System.

The second most recent was James Eastland, and it looks like the same sort of thing applies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eastland

James Oliver Eastland (November 28, 1904 – February 19, 1986) was an American attorney, plantation owner, and politician from Mississippi. A Democrat, he served in the United States Senate in 1941 and again from 1943 until his resignation in late 1978. Eastland was a segregationist who led the Southern resistance against racial integration during the civil rights movement, often speaking of African Americans as "an inferior race".[1] Eastland has been called the "Voice of the White South" and the "Godfather of Mississippi Politics".[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Stennis

Along with fellow Mississippi senator James Eastland, Stennis was a zealous supporter of racial segregation. He and Eastland supported the Dixiecrat ticket in 1948 headed by Strom Thurmond,[2] and signed the Southern Manifesto, which called for massive resistance to the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. He also voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

10 to remove a president after being impeached by the house.

That's still a huge longshot. Only 7 Republican senators voted to convict Trump, the first time around and of those, only 2 3 are still in Congress (Romney, Murkowski, Cassidy). The rest of the remaining 44 Republican seats have only gotten more red since then, plus you still have Fetterman who's spoken out against impeachment in the past.

EDIT: forgot Romney didn't run again

Can we count on Fetterman to vote with the Democrats?

The filibuster is only there to preserve the status quo. Its not a time for it to exist, and it should not be made part of congresses rules in January. We need vast reform, not status quo.

This says that there can be recounts via court order, but that there is no automatic recount, so I dunno.

https://www.kcra.com/article/newsom-commutes-548-california-death-sentences/74348779

Mississippi does not have a recount provision in state law, and there's no automatic recount process. But a challenger can seek a court order for a recount.

I suspect that that image of Scott Colom grinning ear-to-ear is pretty accurate. I mean, when he started that race, his odds must have been extremely long.

Even at the election, looks like he was considered a long shot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Colom

Despite polling aggregators predicting sub-10 percent chances of Colom winning the seat, the race was too close to call on election night or the next morning.[64][65]

We had one in Canada that was decided by a single vote.

It didn't stop the bots from pushing a "you don't matter" spiel.