Andre Dickens cruised to a second term as mayor of Atlanta on Tuesday night, capturing roughly 85% of the vote and winning the nonpartisan race outright, with no need for a December runoff.
The Associated Press called the race at 8:13 p.m., less than two hours after polls closed. By the time Dickens took the stage at an Old Fourth Ward watch party shortly after 9 p.m., the result was already a foregone conclusion. The mayor thanked the city’s employees and roughly half a million residents, and called the Atlanta City Council “the best in the world.”
A runoff-free re-election
Dickens is the first Atlanta mayor since Shirley Franklin in 2005 to win re-election without a runoff. The city’s 2021 race — in which Dickens himself edged out Felicia Moore by fewer than 800 votes — ended with a December runoff that effectively shaped his first term.
This time, the math broke decisively his way. With three challengers splitting the opposition, Dickens crossed the 50%-plus-one threshold required to avoid a runoff on the strength of a single coalition: Black voters across the West and South sides, younger professionals in and around the Beltline, and the small but growing ranks of new arrivals who told pollsters they had moved to Atlanta in the last four years.
What the results showed
Final unofficial returns from Fulton, DeKalb, and a sliver of the city inside Cobb County, per the Secretary of State’s office and a tally by the Center for Civic Innovation:
- Andre Dickens (incumbent): 88,539 votes (~85.03%)
- Eddie Meredith (businessman and organizer): 6,331 votes (~6.08%)
- Kalema Jackson (former police officer): 5,290 votes (~5.08%)
- Helmut Domagalski (LGBTQ+ nonprofit founder): the remainder, bringing the four-candidate total to roughly 104,000 votes
Dickens carried every council district and won every precinct reporting on election night. Turnout was about 32% of registered voters, a notable jump from the 26% who turned out in 2021.
What changed since 2021
Dickens’s first term was defined by a single, persistent problem: crime. Atlanta’s homicide rate hit a 20-year high in 2022, and the mayor spent much of 2023 and 2024 fighting back against the perception that downtown was unsafe. By this fall, that picture had changed measurably. According to Atlanta Police Department data cited by the Atlanta Police Foundation, homicides are down about 43% since 2022, and overall crime dropped about 7% between 2024 and 2025.
The shift gave Dickens room to pivot to a forward-looking second-term agenda. In the weeks before the election, his campaign rolled out a $5 billion neighborhood investment plan — anchored by transit expansion, trails, and what would be the largest affordable-housing bond in city history.
“We were told in 2021 that Atlanta was ungovernable. We were told the problems were too big. Four years later, the data tells a different story.”
— Andre Dickens, election night
What the challengers said
All three challengers — Meredith, Jackson, and Domagalski — conceded by mid-evening. None has indicated whether they will seek office again in 2029.
What comes next
Dickens will be sworn in for his second term in early January 2026. The ceremony is expected to be attended by all four of his living predecessors: Andrew Young, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin, and Kasim Reed.
In his victory speech, the mayor sketched out a second-term to-do list: finish the Southside Trail before 2027, push the city’s data-center moratorium discussion to a conclusion, and deliver the affordable-housing bond to voters by November 2026.
“That’s the group project,” he said. “And we’re not done.”
Marcus James covers the Georgia statehouse and Atlanta city hall for WACN 21. Reach him at mjames@wacn21.com.
