Georgia's pivotal elections: Four key takeaways

Georgia’s electoral commission announced this morning that the ruling Georgian Dream party had claimed a comfortable majority in last night’s election, with 54% of the vote based on 99% of precincts counted.

Four main opposition parties, who had planned to band together in order to remove Georgian Dream from power, gathered 37%, with votes from Georgian diaspora abroad yet to be tallied.

Georgian Dream’s leader Bidzina Ivanishvili claimed victory soon after polls closed, telling supporters it was a “rare occasion” that a party achieved victory for four terms in a row.

The stage was set for unrest as the four opposition parties immediately refused to recognise the results, claiming the results were rigged and falsified.

Disputed data

Not long before Georgian Dream claimed a majority, the four opposition parties cheered and congratulated each other in their headquarters based on results from exit polls that showed a dramatically different result.

One poll by Edison showed four opposition parties with 51.9% of the vote and Georgian Dream at 40.9%

The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) previously said that 90% of the vote would be available within two hours of polls closing, however released complete results several hours later.

Members of opposition parties pointed to unexpectedly high numbers of Georgian Dream votes in areas such as Tbilisi, which is considered to be an opposition stronghold.

One poll by HarrisX for pro-opposition channels gave Georgian Dream 42% of the vote and the combined opposition groups 48%.

“We analysed the data from these precincts and there’s a wide discrepancy from the data we have. In some cases they have districts in Tbilisi where Georgian Dream are winning by 45% of the vote, whereas we know most of the opposition vote came from Tbilisi,” Dritan Nesho of HarrisX told BBC news of preliminary results released by the CEC.

Opposition parties went so far as to claim the results had been manipulated with the chair of United National Movement saying, “We will not accept the results of these elections” which had been “stolen.”

Allegations of voting violations

Several Georgian electoral observer groups said there were incidents of violations as Georgians cast their votes on Saturday.

One video of someone stuffing a ballot box in Marneuli went viral as voting was underway, with the Interior Ministry announcing there would be an investigation into the incident and all votes from the polling station declared invalid.

My Vote, a local observer mission comprised of several Georgian civil society organisations, called for results to be annulled based on several incidents of voter manipulation as well as harassment at polling stations.

The European Parliament confirmed the elections were monitored by both domestic and international observers, including a delegation from the European Parliament.

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights told Euronews it had 380 people observing the elections, along with additional international observers. They will release their official results today.

Bitter divisions

Georgia’s ruling party and its opposition have framed the election in the starkest of terms, with Ivanishvili claiming he would ban opposition parties if Georgian Dream won a constitutional majority.

In a rally in Tbilisi ahead of the vote Ivanishvili accused the opposition parties of “war crimes” against the Georgian people.

The opposition have retaliated strongly to the results, with Coalition for Change’s leader Nika Gvaramia saying, “The elections were stolen.”

Chair of the United National Movement Tina Bokuchava accused the CEC of carrying out Ivanishvili’s dirty work and that the opposition would, “fight like never before to reclaim our European future.”

Georgia’s EU future unclear

The election was framed by the opposition as a crucial juncture in Georgia’s membership to the European Union.

The EU granted Georgia candidate membership status last year but its application was frozen in response to the so-called “foreign agents” bill passed in May by Georgian Dream which requires media and NGOs receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “agents of foreign influence.”

The law has been widely criticised by EU leaders, who say that it mimics legislation in neighbouring Russia.

Georgian Dream have said they are committed to Georgia’s EU membership, claiming they want to join the bloc on their own terms.

The opposition parties, who all signed up to President Salome Zourabichvili’s “Georgian Charter” ahead of the election, all said they would carry out immediate reforms to re-open Georgia’s EU membership talks if they won a majority.

However, if Georgian Dream’s majority holds it is unclear how Georgia’s EU ambitions will progress.

So far, European leaders have been relatively quiet about the results of the election with only Hungary’s Victor Orbán congratulating Georgian Dream in a post on X.