Scott Colom wins Senate election in Mississippi

US Democratic nominee Scott Colom defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's closely contested US Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process.

The result was a stunning upset in the heavily Republican state and expanded on the national drubbing the Democrats delivered to US President Donald Trump's Republicans in the November 3rd midterm elections.

SCOTT COLOM (D) Missiissippi Senator-Elect: "But every time I said it, (I was going to win this election) I pointed out that people were going to give me too much credit for it because it's not something that I did, y'all. It's something that we did. All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this. I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to understand that we could show the country that Mississippi matters."

The Mississippi Senate race was one of the final races to be called after the elections.

The contest was so tight that Colom at times led the vote count by only a few dozen votes.

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

He is also Mississippi's first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.

He harnessed frustration over the cost of living with a breakout campaign ad in which voters ridiculed Hyde-Smith's suggestion that consumers could choose other "proteins" instead of paying rising beef prices.