Photo credit: Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor
By BallotWire
11/04/2026
The Wire: Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia’s governorship Tuesday, defeating Republican Rick Jackson 54.3% to 45.7%, an 8.6-point margin that makes her the first Black woman ever elected governor of any state.
Why it counts: The former Atlanta mayor becomes the first Black woman elected governor of any state in American history and Georgia’s first woman elected governor, flipping an office Republicans had held since 2003. It was the second major Democratic statewide win in Georgia that night, alongside Sen. Jon Ossoff’s reelection, and part of a national sweep in which Democrats flipped five governorships.
The margin: Bottoms took 54.3% to Jackson’s 45.7%, with nearly all votes counted. The result marked a roughly 11-point swing from President Trump’s narrow win in Georgia two years ago.
The fine print: Jackson, a Republican businessman, poured more than $200 million of his own money into the race, one of the most expensive self-funded gubernatorial bids in the country. It was not enough to overcome a political environment that turned sharply against Republicans up and down the Georgia ballot. Bottoms succeeds a term-limited Republican governor.
On the record: Bottoms built her campaign on her record running Atlanta and cast the race as a chance to extend Georgia’s recent Democratic gains to the governor’s mansion.
The counter: Jackson ran as an outsider and leaned on his personal fortune to flood the airwaves, arguing his business background made him better suited to manage the state. National Republicans had counted Georgia among the battlegrounds they needed to hold.
The backdrop: Georgia has trended from reliably red toward genuine competitiveness over the past several cycles, with Democrats winning Senate races and the state’s presidential vote in recent years before Tuesday’s breakthrough at the top of state government. Bottoms’ win, in a state Trump carried in 2024, underscored how far the map moved.
Looking ahead: Bottoms will be inaugurated in January. Her win gives Democrats unified control of the governorship heading into the 2028 cycle, when Georgia is again expected to be a presidential battleground.