A leading U.S. polling, data and strategy consulting firm HarrisX has published a final 2024 elections exit poll analysis, which it says raises questions about “statistically inexplainable data discrepancies by the Central Election Commission amounting to over 8 percent of the total vote, or at least 172,523 raw votes, across a minimum of 27 districts.” The discrepancy “cannot be explained by statistical variance, pointing to possible voting irregularities,” the analysis says.
HarrisX says that even when the data is adjusted with the data released by the CEC through “weighting,” when it fully accounts for any kind of non-response bias, when the differences in vote estimates between its exit poll and the official CEC number are tested at a 95% interval, which is the highest statistical threshold, the results of the analysis still point to the same conclusion.
The analysis describes specific cases and examples, detailing the methodology, weighting, results by age, gender and time of day, and cites the discrepancies revealed across Georgia, referring for example to the results in Marneuli district, noting that according to the HarrisX exit poll, Georgian Dream won 40% of the vote there in 2024, but the official CEC results show 80% of the vote for Georgian Dream.
HarrisX notes that it has high confidence in its exit poll results for a number of reasons, such as its experience in polling, the number of Georgian voters surveyed and voting methodology, the local partner professionals who were trained by HarrisX in advance, the confidentiality of the survey, and the consistency of the HarrisX poll with the results of the only other exit poll conducted by a non-Georgian polling organization, Edison Research. The organization also notes that the exit poll results of other questions asked in the survey are in line with the results of the vote choice question and consistent with other public polls, such as 84% of respondents saying they support Georgia joining the EU, etc.
The analysis, calibrated by final CEC information, HarrisX says, reveals “statistically unexplainable discrepancies” amounting to over 8 percent of the total vote.
The organization says that its comparative vote analysis “has identified unusual vote shifts between the 2020 and 2024 elections, and between our Exit Poll and the 2024 CEC final results, which appear far out of line with what could be explained by statistical variance or non-response bias.”
It concludes that “even when the Exit Poll data is adjusted to reflect the full data parameters published by the CEC, the final election result placing Georgian Dream at 53.96% is, simply put, statistically impossible.”
HarrisX calls on the CEC to “provide more information and answers in the interest of public transparency.”
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