Melvin E. Thompson Democratic Herman Talmadge Democratic The 1948 Georgia gubernatorial special election took place on November 2, 1948, in order to elect the Governor of Georgia.

[2] Herman Talmadge, the son of the winner of the 1946 election, the late Eugene Talmadge,[3] defeated Governor Thompson in the Democratic primary by a margin of 51.8% to 45.1% with three other candidates getting 3.1% of the vote[4][5] and then proceeded to win the general election with 97.51% of the vote.

As was common at the time, the Democratic candidate ran with only token opposition in the general election so therefore the Democratic primary was the real contest, and winning the primary was considered tantamount to election.

As Talmadge won a majority of county unit votes, there was no run-off.

[6] The system was ostensibly designed to function similarly to the Electoral College, but in practice the large ratio of unit votes for small, rural counties to unit votes for more populous urban areas provided outsized political influence to the smaller counties.