October in Georgia is all about races, as the country awaits two national football team games, a Georgian’s UFC title defense fight, and, most importantly, crucial parliamentary elections later in the month. But with less than three weeks to go, Georgians seem to have an easier time predicting the outcome of a football game than a parliamentary election often billed as a “referendum of choice between Europe and Russia.”
Opposition alliances will seek to end the 12-year rule of the increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream, which seeks a “constitutional majority” to crack down on the opposition and maintain “peace”. The campaign is tense, and the outcome is uncertain. But here is what we know about the context, polls, past practices, and key factors that could determine the outcome.
Context & Contenders
On October 26, Georgians will head to the polls to elect a 150-member parliament in their first fully proportional elections. Only parties that pass the 5 percent threshold will secure seats. The elections follow months of political turmoil, including a series of anti-democratic moves by the ruling Georgian Dream party, such as the passage of the Foreign Agents Law, anti-LGBT legislation, and the use of repressive measures to crack down on dissent and protests.
The moves raised temperatures inside the country while damaging relations with the West – including stalling Georgia’s EU integration process months after the country secured its EU candidacy. This led pro-Western Georgians to see the upcoming vote as crucial, with President Salome Zurabishvili calling it a “referendum” between Russia and the West. On the other hand, the Georgian Dream has portrayed the vote as a choice between war and peace.
The campaign of the ruling Georgian Dream party, which is running under its traditional 41 ballot number, has focused on scaremongering that Georgia will repeat Ukraine’s fate should GD lose. To mobilize its supporters, the party has also said it seeks a super-majority, which it will use to ban opposition parties, further restrict LGBT rights, and – without giving many details – restore territorial integrity, including by “apologizing” for the 2008 war.
Promising to prevent the country’s further descent into authoritarianism and ensure its return to a pro-Western course, opposition parties have formed four major coalitions to hedge against the risk of wasting votes under the threshold. These include (by election ballot numbers):
- (5) Unity – to Save Georgia, which unites the former ruling United National Movement, plus Strategy Agmashenebeli and various old and new faces;
- (4) Coalition for Change, another union of former UNM faces brings together Ahali led by Nika Gvaramia and Nika Melia, Girchi – More Freedom led by Zura Japaridze, and Droa led by Elene Khoshtaria;
- (9) Strong Georgia, an alliance positioning itself as equidistant from both UNM and GD, is led by Lelo for Georgia and includes For People led by Anna Dolidze, Citizens led by Aleko Elisashvili, and Freedom Square led by Levan Tsutskiridze; and
- (25) For Georgia, led by the former GD Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia – another self-positioned “neither UNM nor GD” force, uniting primarily former government officials and MPs who had deserted the Georgian Dream.
Other parties expected to take some of the opposition votes are the libertarian Girchi led by MP Iago Khvichia, who does not rule out a coalition with Georgian Dream, and the Labor Party led by Shalva Natelashvili. The Alliance of Patriots, a nativist force led by Irma Inashvili and now including the far-right group Alt-Info, is expected to compete for voters with GD. A total of 18 parties/coalitions have registered their electoral lists for the 2024 elections, less than half as many as in 2020.
Opinion Polls & Past Trends
Two pollsters – Edison Research (commissioned by the opposition-leaning Formula TV) and Gorbi (commissioned by the pro-government Imedi TV) – ran opinion polls for the October 26 elections. However, observers generally treat such data with caution, either because of a history of not predicting official results accurately enough, or because of mistrust of the particular polling organization, or due to a perceived low level of respondent honesty in a fear-driven campaign environment.
The latest Edison Research poll, fielded on September 17-29 and published by Formula TV on October 4, offers results through the allocation of undecided voters and with a margin of error of +-2.8%. The poll places Georgian Dream at 33%, while four opposition coalitions that cross the 5% threshold total 55%. Another Edison Research poll, published a few weeks earlier, showed a broadly similar picture.
The Gorbi poll, conducted between September 18-30 and published by the pro-government Imedi TV channel on October 8, shows drastically different results. According to the poll, which also offers results with voter allocation and a +-3% margin of error, GD ends up with 59.5% – precisely the share of support that GD continuously claims to have – with only two of the opposition coalitions making it over the threshold with a total of 23.9%. The poll puts both Strong Georgia (4.5%) and Gakharia’s For Georgia (3.8%) below the 5% threshold. In the previous Gorbi poll published in August, Strong Georgia also passed the threshold.
* Gorbi poll doesn’t feature Labor Party rankings separately
It is also noteworthy that the latest polls are the lowest Edison Research has ranked Georgian Dream between the 2020, 2021, and 2024 elections, and the highest Gorbi has ranked the ruling party between these three elections.
Even though 2021 was a local election, it was still considered a landmark vote as it came in the wake of the highly contested 2020 parliamentary vote and had a critical rider attached to it: the EU-brokered April 19, 2021 agreement between the parties, which the ruling party later quit, said that if GD got less than 43% in the proportional share of 2021 locals, snap parliamentary elections were to be called.
The inaccuracies in the 2021 polls compared to the official results were also often attributed to the surprise return to the country of long-exiled ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. The 2021 locals were expected to prop up more moderate forces, but Saakashvili’s return is thought to have hardened the extreme poles – the opposition voters opted for UNM, while anti-UNM voters rushed to the Georgian Dream.
2020 Edison Research poll does not allocate undecided voters, with 24% remaining undecided
Another trend was that the share of support Georgian Dream enjoyed from its 2012 election victory (54.97%, 1,181,862 votes) to the 2021 elections decreased, even though the party received more real votes in 2020 than it did in 2016. The 2020 elections also marked GD’s more openly conservative turn, with the party trying to steal some of the far-right votes through nativist rhetoric (e.g. Cartographers’ Case). The AoP barely campaigned in the 2021 elections, while for the upcoming vote, it teamed up with the Alt-Info/Conservative Movement, a far-right and violent populist force, after the latter was repeatedly prevented by the relevant authorities from registering.
Key Influences
While economic and social issues, the so-called “real issues,” have been the focus of many of the major contenders during the campaign, the elections seem to be more about what the voters have to lose and less about what they have to gain. The biggest potential loss is stability, and the election results may depend on what the majority sees as the source of that stability – Georgia’s decades-long work toward becoming a more democratic or “European” country or some personal status quo.
- The ‘Referendums‘ (War vs Peace, Russia vs West, Autocracy vs Democracy)
Presenting the October vote as a kind of “referendum” is the key tactic of most parties to get Georgians to vote for them. Georgian Dream has positioned itself as a guarantor of peace and stability amid the war in Ukraine, promising to protect against a similar military threat from Russia and scaremongering with war should the opposition win. The ruling party has also advertised itself as a protector of traditional Christian values against what it calls “LGBT propaganda” promoted in the West. The GD thus presents the upcoming vote as a choice between “war vs peace” and “traditional values vs moral decay.”
The opposition, on the other hand, has framed the elections as a choice between Russia and the West, especially amid clear signals from Brussels that the government’s anti-democratic moves have put EU integration on hold. For many, including a part of the electorate that supported the Georgian Dream in 2012 hoping for a more democratic government, the choice may also be between democracy and autocracy, especially amid GD’s explicit promises of further crackdowns on human rights and freedoms.
- Economy vs Administrative Resources
The economy has continued to be the top concern for Georgians, but this is not expected to automatically translate into opposition votes. While some Georgians may use their vote to protest their dire financial situation, the ruling party has been known to exploit widespread poverty to keep large swaths of Georgians tied to its rule. As of 2023, nearly half a million Georgians remained dependent on state welfare, and Georgian Dream is known to have developed an extensive network of favors during its 12-year rule to employ its loyalists in the civil service and various local public agencies. Other state employees may fear losing their jobs for siding with the opposition. The party also rolled out various policies, such as mass amnesty, which was believed to have electoral goals.
- Youth and Diaspora
Two groups are hoped to make a difference in this election: the youth and the diaspora. According to official statistics, some 170,000 Georgians between the ages of 18 and 21 will be allowed to vote in their first parliamentary elections, and Georgian Gen-Z-ers are expected to largely side with the opposition.
Great efforts have also been made to increase the participation of the Georgian diaspora. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians are believed to live abroad, but in recent elections, the participation of Georgian expatriates, who traditionally also side with the opposition, has been insignificant: in 2020, 66,217 Georgians registered to vote outside the country, but only 12,247 showed up to cast their ballots.
The low turnout has been attributed in part to the inconvenience of traveling long distances to polling stations, and there have been many efforts this year to add more precincts. However, the Central Election Commission said it would only open 60 precincts in 42 countries (41 should the Foreign Ministry reconsider opening a precinct in Israel amid military escalation). The registration deadline passed on October 7, and final official data is not yet available, but the number of registered expatriates this year is estimated around 90-100 thousand. It’s unclear whether more will turn out to vote than in the past, but some independent citizen initiatives are already emerging to help prospective voters with transportation and accommodation.
- Polling Day Drama
There are fears that the GD will be tempted to rig the elections, partly because of a series of controversial changes to the election code and partly because of past practices of voter intimidation and illegal forms of voter mobilization on election day. Voting will be electronic for the first time in most districts, with 90% of Georgians voting electronically. New procedures are designed to reduce the risk of some forms of manipulation, such as attempts to control voters by forcing them to take a photo of their ballots. Civil society representatives have called for an unprecedented mobilization of volunteer observers to protect the vote.
The main local and international watchdogs that have traditionally observed Georgian elections are expected to monitor the vote again, despite the move (later reversed) by the Anti-Corruption Bureau to prevent Transparency International – Georgia from doing its work. Other new civil society initiatives, such as the My Vote coalition, have emerged to monitor the polls.
- President’s Role
With opposition voters hoping for a coalition government after the elections, President Zurabishvili has offered her leadership by tying the four main opposition coalitions to the Georgian Charter. The Charter provides for the formation of a technocratic government and gives it one year to put the country on the reform path demanded by the EU and create conditions for early free and fair elections.
- Another October Surprise?
With more than two weeks to go before the elections, one must be on the lookout for big blows that could be game-changers, similar to the prison abuse leaks in the weeks leading up to the 2012 elections or the sudden arrival of ex-President Saakashvili on the eve of the 2021 municipal vote.