Federal elections in Mississippi unlikely to produce any significant political surprises

• Columnist Sid Salter says Mississippi’s reliable “red state” status has removed most of the intrigue from how voters will lean here.

Mississippians will go to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5 to cast their ballots in the nation’s federal presidential and congressional elections. However, given the state’s history in presidential balloting and reliance on the seniority system for clout in Congress, few surprises are anticipated.

While the national presidential race is projected to be one of the closest races in the nation’s history between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former GOP President Donald Trump, Mississippi’s reliable “red state” status has removed most of the intrigue from how voters will lean here.

Mississippi has given Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump double-digit wins in both presidential general elections (2016 and 2020) in which he’s faced Magnolia State voters and there’s no plausible reason to expect a different outcome in 2024.

Since 1996, Mississippi has voted Republican in presidential politics by an average of 56.17% and Democratic by an average 41.78% – with the rest of the vote scattered among third-party or independent candidates. That’s seven election cycles covering 28 years.

From 1972 to the present, the only Democrat to carry Mississippi in a presidential general election was fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter in 1976. That’s 58 years excluding the current election cycle.

Trump in 2020 carried Mississippi with 57.60% of the vote to Democrat Joe Biden’s 41.06%. State voter turnout in that race was 1.313 million.

In 2016, Trump carried the state with 57.86% of the vote to 40.06% for Clinton. State voter turnout in 2016 was 1.211 million. Remember that number. In 2008, 1.7 million Mississippians voted. In 2012, some 1.2 million Mississippians voted.

In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won about 710,746 votes. In 2008, the GOP’s John McCain won 725,000. President Barack Obama’s total fell to 562,949, down 30,000 votes from 2008 to 2012.

Obama won 43.7% of the 2012 vote in Mississippi – the second-best performance of any Democrat in the last nine election cycles. The only instance better was the 44.1% of Mississippi ballots that Bill Clinton garnered in his 1996 re-election win.

In the U.S. House of Representatives races, all four Mississippi incumbents – 1st District U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Tupelo, 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, 3rd District U.S. Rep. Michael Guest. R-Brandon, and 4th District U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell, R-Pascagoula – are all cruising to re-election.

On the Senate side, Mississippi’s senior U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Tupelo, is heavily favored in his re-election bid to defeat Democratic challenger Ty Pinkins. The most impactful aspect of the Wicker race is his current status as the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Should the GOP take control of the Senate – as is projected by most national political observers with the GOP poised to pick up seats in West Virginia and Montana and more – Wicker will assume the chair of the powerful national defense committee. Wicker, a recognized expert on air, land and sea power in the U.S. military, has been a longtime advocate for rebuilding and modernizing the military as occurred under the Reagan administration.

While the state’s junior senator is not standing for re-election this year, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Brookhaven, has been the topic of growing speculation that should Trump return to the White House, she would likely be on the shortlist for consideration as Trump’s secretary of agriculture.

A former Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce, Hyde-Smith remains active as a cattle farmer and partner in a stockyard operation. Last year, she was one of six named to Trump’s Agriculture Advisory Committee.

Such a development would launch quite a momentous fall of political dominoes in Mississippi. But for now, Wicker’s likely Armed Services ascendancy and Hyde-Smith’s Trump Cabinet consideration are the most intriguing aspects of the 2024 elections in Mississippi.