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NATCHEZ — The incumbent United States Representative Bennie Thompson, who represents the 2nd Congressional District in Mississippi, won more than 95% of Democrats’ favor in Adams County during Tuesday’s primary election, according to preliminary results.

Turnout for the county was slow with around 17% of 18,888 registered voters showing up at the polls.

So far, Thompson has received 2,505 votes while his challenger, Jerry Kerner, won 125 votes in Adams County.

On the Republican ballot, Brian Flowers led with 225 votes from Adams County, or 41.51% of the Republican votes in the county. Michael Carson closely followed with 175 votes and 32.29% of all of the Republican votes. Ronald Eller had 131 votes, or 24.17% and Stanford Johnson had 10 votes, or 1.85%. There were also at least four write-in votes, three on the Democratic side and one on the Republican side.

Absentee ballots that could be machine counted are included in the total and affidavit counting begins Wednesday, officials said. Affidavits and absentee ballots that were rejected by the counting machine will have to go through a certification process.

One polling place in Natchez also lost power during the final two hours before the closing of Tuesday’s congressional primary election, Adams County Election Commissioner Larry Gardner said.

The Carpenter precinct, located at Rosehill Baptist Church on Madison street, lost power at approximately 5 p.m. Tuesday where polls were still open in the primary election for the 2^nd Congressional District seat, Gardner said.

According to Entergy, 186 customers were affected by the power outage, which was caused by a broken utility pole.

However, the poll stayed open with voters making their selections in the dark. The four plug-in voting machines ran on backup battery power, Gardner said. Two of the machines ran out of battery before polls closed at 7 p.m., but voters could still use the remaining two at the precinct. All of the votes on each machine are saved on memory cards, so no votes would be lost because of the outage, Gardner said.

Even if all of the machines had stopped working there is still a backup plan, he added.

“We have paper ballots that we could use if all of the machines go out,” he said. “When there is a will, there is a way.”

Apart from the power loss, no other hiccups were reported during Tuesday’s primary election, Gardner said.