Democrats Pour Money Into Mississippi Senate Race
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Right 50%
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What happened
Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, announced Tuesday that it would spend $1.2 million on television and digital ads in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race backing Democrat Scott Colom against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, with the spots set to run from Wednesday through Election Day. Mississippi last elected a Democratic U.S. senator in 1982, and Republicans have held both of the state’s Senate seats since 1989. A Wedgwood Polls survey found Colom trailing Hyde-Smith 52 percent to 48 percent, while other polls showed Hyde-Smith ahead by single digits; about $8 million had been spent in the race, with Colom outspending Hyde-Smith roughly $4.6 million to $3.2 million. Colom, district attorney for Mississippi’s 16th Judicial District, had campaigned with Sen. Raphael Warnock and was scheduled to rally with former Vice President Kamala Harris. President Donald Trump won 60.9 percent of Mississippi’s vote in the 2024 presidential election.
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage does not tell readers the Mississippi Senate race is already close. It frames a super PAC adding a "deep-red state" to a Senate-flip map and stops there. Right-leaning coverage reports the Democrat trailing by four points, which recasts the ad buy as money going into a competitive contest rather than a symbolic long shot. Other polls cited in right-leaning coverage also show only a single-digit gap.
Right-leaning coverage leads with Democrats pouring money into a seat the party has not held since the 1980s and notes that the Democrat is already outspending the Republican incumbent. Left-leaning coverage leads with the PAC announcement and the national goal of flipping the Senate, offering no history of who has held the seat.
What do the new ads actually claim about Hyde-Smith or Colom?
Bottom line
The Hill covered the ad buy as if Mississippi were just another red target on a flip map. Daily Caller is where a reader learns one poll already has it inside four points.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- A Wedgwood Polls survey found Colom trailing Hyde-Smith 52% to 48%
- Only $8 million has been spent in the race, with Colom outspending Hyde-Smith nearly $4.6 million to $3.2 million
- Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French said Colom is running a competitive race that has put Hyde-Smith on her heels
- The $1.2 million will be spent on television and digital ads
- President Donald Trump won 60.9% of the vote in Mississippi in the 2024 presidential election
The Left View
The Hill presented the Senate Majority PAC buy as Democrats adding a deep-red state to their list of Senate targets while the party tries to flip the chamber in November. In that framing, Mississippi is an expansion of the map, not a sideshow: television and digital ads through Election Day signal that national Democrats now treat the contest as one worth contesting in a bid to take the Senate.
The Right View
Daily Caller framed the same buy as Democrats pouring money into a seat the party has not held since the 1980s, stressing the state’s recent Republican presidential margin and the long GOP lock on both Senate seats. The outlet treated Colom’s near-even polling, his spending edge, and the PAC’s claim that he had put Hyde-Smith “on her heels” as the Democratic case for competitiveness, while still underscoring how unusual a win would be. It placed the Mississippi investment alongside other map moves—a $5 million Kansas television campaign and large spends in Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska, plus Democrats pulling money from Georgia and North Carolina, where their candidates led—and linked possible Democratic energy to Colom’s affordability message and to Black voter mobilization after Mississippi considered, then abandoned, a redistricting session following the Supreme Court’s May ruling that Louisiana’s racially gerrymandered map was unconstitutional.
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is that Democrats would not add Mississippi if the race were a formality: Colom was within a few points in public polling, had already outspent the incumbent, and a major party super PAC described him as having put Hyde-Smith “on her heels.” The right’s strongest argument is the state’s partisan structure—a Senate seat out of Democratic hands since the 1980s and a 2024 presidential result well above 60 percent Republican—which makes a late $1.2 million ad campaign a thin instrument against that baseline. The central unresolved tension is whether single-digit polls and a national Democratic investment reflect a real, turnout-and-affordability-driven opening, or an overread of a state whose recent electoral history still strongly favors the Republican incumbent.
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