Georgian newspaper’s informal poll suggests three-way tie for first

The newspaper Alia has tried its hand at the polling game, publishing the results of 2534 interviews taken up to December 17. Alia’s poll suggests that incumbent presidential candidate Mikheil Saakashvili, opposition coalition candidate Levan Gachechiladze, and New Rights leader Davit Gamkrelidze are closely matched for first place—and that Saakashvili is well short of the 50 percent he would need to avoid a run-off after the January 5 election.

A number of groups have released election polling this month, but none have followed up with any account of their methodology which might validate their results. Questions and locations for Alia’s polling were not available.