U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat nominee Scott Colom (Photos from Facebook)
- Mississippi has seen this playbook before from a Democrat challenger to U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Like Scott Colom’s campaign, media outlets ran with polling results in 2020 in her race with Mike Espy showing the Democrat was within 1% of the Republican incumbent. Espy then lost by 10%.
Scott Colom’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Mississippi is touting a poll produced by Wedgewood Polls, a new polling firm that is less than a year old.
Some media outlets are biting on the results, sharing headlines like this from Newsweek that claim, “Democrat Threatens Historic Senate Upset in Deep-Red Mississippi.”
The Wedgewood Polls survey found that incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith leads Colom 52% to 48%, a spread that the Colom campaign is using to say the race is “tied” when considering the 4.3-point margin of error.
The poll of 511 likely voters was conducted from October 12 to 14 by Wedgewood Polls, an independent survey research firm founded in 2026 that little is known about. Founding Partner of Zenith Polls, Adam Carlson asked in June, “Does anyone know anything about Wedgwood Polls? This is the first I’ve heard of them.”
Wedgewood’s first published poll was in June for the Louisiana U.S. Senate Republican Primary. The survey, which was said to have been conducted June 22-24, showed John Fleming outpacing Julia Letlow by a 4-point margin, 48% to 44%. Yet, when the dust settled 3 days later on June 27, Letlow was the winner with 56.9% to Fleming’s 43.1% – a nearly 13-point swing for Letlow from the Wedgewood Polls survey just days earlier.
The new polling firm has since published surveys in the U.S. Senate races in Michigan, Texas, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio as well gubernatorial races in a spattering of states and a poll on President Donald Trump’s approval rating.
Colom’s campaign is also sharing polling results from its own pollster conducted for Way to Lead PAC and a survey done for the Democratic-aligned SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) Action Fund by Impact Research. Those polls showed Hyde-Smith on top of Colom by 6 points in August and 3 points in April, respectively.
Colom campaign Manager Gerard Henderson used the friendly polling to say, “In a state Donald Trump won, an incumbent Republican senator should be cruising. Instead, Cindy Hyde-Smith is scared she’s about to lose.”
However, Mississippi has seen this playbook before from a Democrat challenger to Hyde-Smith.
Nearly 6 years ago to the day in 2020, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy shared this on X: “In March, we were 25 points behind Cindy Hyde-Smith. Now, we are just 1 point down. The momentum is on our side. We can WIN this in 13 days.”
Espy even posted a Newsweek article with a favorable headline, just as Colom has now done.
Then on X the day of the General Election, Espy wrote, “We are statistically tied with Cindy Hyde-Smith. We have MOMENTUM on our side. We can WIN today.”
Espy’s campaign was basing his narrative off of a poll from The Tyson Group that showed Hyde-Smith holding a 1% lead over Espy, with the Republican at 41% to the Democrat’s 40%.
Like Colom’s campaign, media outlets ran with the Espy polling results, urged on by the Democrat’s campaign as it attempted to present itself as viable and worthy of earned media as well as additional fundraising support to unseat the Republican in red Mississippi.
President Barack Obama and fellow national Democrats came to Espy’s side to push Mississippi to make a change to the Democrat column, the same as is happening now with Colom.
Yet, when Magnolia State voters went to the polls in November 2020, Espy lost to Hyde-Smith by 10 points, 54% to 44% – worse than he did two years prior in the special election to replace Thad Cochran.
Whether history will repeat itself on November 3 in this midterm election remains to be seen, but for now, it appears Colom is taking a page from Espy down the stretch, trying to gain media attention with friendly polling that catches eyes of donors and national progressive leaders, as he tries to rally voters to his campaign with less than three weeks to go until Election Day.
Colom and Hyde-Smith will face off on November 3 with independent candidate Ty Pinkins also on the ballot.
