Three Mississippi incumbent U.S. House incumbents won handily, and a new U.S. House member was elected on Tuesday Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Three Mississippi U.S. House incumbents won handily, and a new U.S. House member was elected on Tuesday, according to preliminary election results gathered by the Associated Press.

Incumbent U.S. Reps. Trent Kelly in the 1st Congressional District, Bennie Thompson in the 2nd Congressional District and Michael Guest in the 3rd Congressional District easily won their races on Tuesday. In the 4th Congressional District, Mike Ezell won his first term in the U.S. House.

Thompson, the longest serving delegate representing Mississippi in Washington, remains the state’s sole Democratic representative. Kelly, Guest and Ezell are Republicans.

While the national spotlight was on key battleground states and congressional districts to determine which party would control the U.S. House and Senate, there was never much doubt who would win Mississippi’s four contested elections. Various reports indicate that turnout was light across the state on Tuesday.

Neither of Mississippi’s two U.S. senators, Roger Wicker or Cindy Hyde-Smith, were up for reelection this year. The seat Wicker holds is up for grabs in 2024, and the seat Hyde-Smith holds is up in 2026.

In the House races:

  • District 1 incumbent Kelly, a former district attorney in northeast Mississippi, defeated Dianne Dodson Black, an Olive Branch small business owner. Kelly was first elected to Congress in a 2015 special election to replace Alan Nunnelee, who died in office. Black was attempting to become the first African American woman from Mississippi elected to a federal office.
  • District 2 incumbent Thompson upended Brian Flowers of Clinton, a Navy veteran who works in mechanical planning at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Plant near Port Gibson. Thompson, chair of the Homeland Security Committee and the special committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, is the second Black Mississippians to serve in Congress in the modern era.
  • District 3 incumbent Guest, a former district attorney in Madison and Rankin counties, beat Neshoba County native Democrat Shuwaski Young. Young was running for office for the first time, but has experience working in the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office and in Homeland Security on the national level. Guest was first elected in 2018.
  • In District 4, Ezell, who defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo in the Republican primary earlier this year, defeated Democrat Johnny DuPree and Libertarian Alden Patrick Johnson. DuPree, former mayor of Hattiesburg, also has run unsuccessfully for governor and secretary of state. In 2011, DuPree became the first African American major party nominee for governor.

Other contests across Mississippi, such as for judicial posts and school board seats, also were on the ballot.

Click here to see full results from Tuesday’s midterm elections.

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Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today’s senior capitol reporter, covers politics, government and the Mississippi State Legislature. He also writes a weekly news analysis which is co-published in newspapers statewide. A native of Laurel, Bobby joined our team June 2018 after working for the North Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo since 1984. He is president of the Mississippi Capitol Press Corps Association and works with the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute to organize press luncheons. Bobby has a bachelor's in American Studies from the University of Southern Mississippi and has received multiple awards from the Mississippi Press Association, including the Bill Minor Best Investigative/In-depth Reporting and Best Commentary Column.

Geoff serves as Politics and Government Editor, working closely with Mississippi Today leadership on editorial strategy and investigations. Pender joined the Mississippi Today team in 2020, bringing 30 years of political and government reporting experience to the newsroom.

Previously, Pender served as Politics and Investigative Editor at The Clarion Ledger, where he also penned a popular political column. While at The Clarion Ledger, Pender helped lead digital transformation for the legacy publication, while overseeing watchdog news teams and government reporting. He previously served as an investigative reporter and political editor at the Sun Herald, where he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team for Hurricane Katrina coverage. Originally from Florence, Mississippi, Pender is a journalism graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and has received numerous awards throughout his career for reporting, columns and freedom of information efforts.