Recap: Election 2012

There were 3, 668 ordinary and 71 special polling stations set up for the October 1 elections. 14 political parties and two blocks participated. Of course the major battle was between the ruling United National Movement and opposition Georgian Dream coalition. While almost all the results are known, there are still several days left before the CEC will announce the final results which are due to be published no later than 20 days after the elections. During the elections, four different organizations carried out exit polls. Most of the exit polls were carried out by the organizations with trusted reputations. However, in the field there were mostly Georgian participants represented. Analysts suggest it was visible that the results of the exit polls were having certain favor for those who ordered the research. That is why some results are substantially different from one another. However, whatever deviation existed in the results, all of them confirm that the opposition Georgian Dream was ahead in the elections, in particular, in the proportional votes where the parties competed with party lists. This fact was admitted by president Saakashvili himself soon after the exit poll results were aired.

In his statement to the Georgian people, he admitted the defeat of his party but only in the proportional system, whereas he expressed his confidence that his part was leading in the majoritarian system [direct voting]. That is why he promised his supporters that the UNM would receive the majority in the next parliament. Since the results are not available as of yet, Ivanishvili also made a public statement claiming to get 100 seats out of 150 in the parliament.

There was one more tendency in the past elections. The battle between the two major political forces left no room for smaller political entities. So parties like the Christian Democrats, New Rights, Labor and others who had had modest plans to overcome the 5% barrier did not qualify at all. It is obvious that in some of the polling stations there were violations detections– for example, one of the stations in Khashuri the police appeared to seize the ballot box and took it away, shooting bullets and tear gas in the direction of supporters of the opposition. Obviously the results were annulled there and repeated elections will be held there. All cases of violations will be evaluated by the CEC later. But it should be said that overall, the elections were held not in a perfect democratic fashion, but in an acceptable manner. All the participating sides agree to that.