If Democrat Scott Colom ultimately wins the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Mississippi, upsetting Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, he will have to send a special thank you to the Memphis suburb of DeSoto County.
Surprisingly, it appears Colom will win DeSoto County, long considered one of the state’s Republican strongholds. But the county’s vote total is more important than DeSoto’s victory for Colom.
In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump received 48,064 votes in DeSoto County, compared to 29,023 for Democrat Kamala Harris.
When all the votes from Tuesday’s election are finally counted in the coming days, Colom will finally reach Harris’ vote total in DeSoto County or be just below. Similarly, Hyde-Smith received fewer than 25,000 votes in DeSoto County, significantly lower than Trump’s. The last time she was on the ballot, during the 2020 presidential election, Hyde-Smith did as well as Trump in DeSoto County, winning by more than 40,000 votes.
Simply put, if she had performed as well this year as she did in 2020 in this one county – DeSoto – she wouldn’t be facing a potential historic upset.
If he wins, Colom would be the first Mississippi Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race since 1982 and the first challenger to upset an incumbent Mississippi senator since, gulp, 1942.
A long-standing joke is that of the political prognosticator proclaiming to a fascinated audience that the outcome of the election would depend on turnout. All election results depend on turnout.
But Tuesday’s Senate election in Mississippi really, no really, depended on turnout, and Scott Colom and his team should be credited for a campaign that delivered his voters what might be one of the most improbable victories in not only the state’s but the nation’s history. Hyde-Smith was unable to bring her voters together on the same level.
It’s no secret that turnout in midterm elections is typically much lower than in presidential elections. This year’s midterm turnout in Mississippi is most likely a record, close to a million votes, but still more than 200,000 shy of the 2024 presidential election and more than 300,000 shy of the 2020 election total.
Midterm turnout will be about 100,000 higher than in Mississippi’s 2023 gubernatorial election, in which incumbent Republican Tate Reeves defeated Democrat Brandon Presley by about 25,000 votes.
DeSoto County provides an example of how Colom was able to outperform Presley. Colom received nearly 15,000 more votes than Presley in the county.
DeSoto isn’t the only reason for Colom’s incredibly strong performance, but it is the most important factor.
And it’s worth noting that DeSoto County has long been a campaign enigma in Mississippi.
DeSoto has been the fastest-growing or one of the fastest-growing counties in Mississippi for years, thanks in large part to transplants from Memphis. Even as the county grew to be one of the largest in the state, it was also home to a large number of low-propensity voters. The Tennessee transplants didn’t seem to care much about the Mississippi elections.
In 1999, Ronnie Musgrove, Mississippi’s last Democratic governor, narrowly lost to Republican Mike Parker in DeSoto County by 9,301 votes to 9,144. But in 2003, Musgrove’s Republican rival, Haley Barbour, recognized DeSoto County’s potential and spent considerable time campaigning in the Memphis suburbs. Then-President George W. Bush campaigned for Barbour in DeSoto County. Barbour’s work led him to defeat Musgrove in DeSoto by 18,689 votes to 8,876.
Thanks to this performance, DeSoto was born as one of the state’s Republican strongholds.
Trump received more than 60% of the vote in DeSoto County in each of his three presidential campaigns and a high of 48,064 votes in 2024. Remember, Hyde-Smith won by fewer than 25,000 votes there last week.
However, outside of presidential elections, DeSoto counties appear to have only lukewarm interest in Mississippi elections and politicians.
That’s likely why Trump came to DeSoto in 2018 during Hyde-Smith’s initial Senate campaign to defend her.
This year, Trump chose to travel to Corinth, in northeast Mississippi, rather than DeSoto County, in the northwest of the state, to campaign for Hyde-Smith.
Maybe this decision was not the right one. Or maybe Trump’s policies are unpopular, even in what is considered a Republican stronghold like DeSoto County.
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