The Labour candidate won 59,276 votes overall after 9,332 second preference votes had been added.
“Getting elected the first time is one thing, getting re-elected is of a whole different order,” said Rees in his election speech.
Sandy Hore-Ruthven, who struggled to hold back tears, warmly congratulated his Labour opponent.
Rees won with a smaller share of the votes this election than when he defeated George Ferguson in 2016 – from 36.3% in the first round, down from 40.4%, By contrast, the Greens more than tripled their first round vote share from 2016 – from 7.1% to 26.1% this time around.
The mayor emphasised that this would be his last term: “I didn’t think it was a big secret, I said I was going to do only do two terms. And then I think you’ve got to give the city space to breathe, to reinvent itself.
Of the independents and smaller parties, independent candidate Sean Donelly got 4,956 votes, Tom Baldwin of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, got 3,194, independent John Langley got 1,528, Reform UK’s Robert Clarke got 806 and Oska Shaw got 389 votes.
Both Watson and Gooch campaigned on pledges to have a referendum on scrapping the mayoral system altogether.
Our journalists have spent hundreds of hours covering Bristol’s local elections, but what comes after the votes have been counted is just as important.
Hundreds of non-EU, non-Commonwealth citizens won’t be allowed to vote in the upcoming local elections.