Ruling party claims its Tbilisi mayor candidate will receive 60% in elections

The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party says that their candidate for Tbilisi mayor, incumbent Kakha Kaladze, will receive 60.1% in the October 2 local elections. 

Per GD’s poll, the head of the United National Movement (UNM) Nika Melia, who is the joint candidate of the opposition parties for Tbilisi mayor, will receive 29.2% in self-government elections.

As you can see, based on the results of the research, Kakha Kaladze will win in the first round by a large margin,” stated the ruling party’s member Mikheil Sarjveladze when presenting the Georgian Dream's sociological survey today. 

Per the GD’s survey, the results for political parties are as distributed: 

• Georgian Dream - 47.4%
• United National Movement - 25.2%
• Girchi-More Freedom - 4.9%
• Party for Georgia - 4.7%
• Citizens - 3.2%
• Lelo for Georgia - 2.4%
• Alliance of Patriots - 1.9%
• European Georgia - 1.8%
• Strategy Aghmashenebeli - 1.7%
• Girchi - 1.1%
• Labour Party - 0.7%
• United Georgia - 0.7%
• Other parties - 4.3%

The survey was conducted between August 21-25 and 2,958 respondents were interviewed. The margin of error of the survey is 3%. 

The UNM however claimed that the ruling party will not receive more than 35% of votes in two eastern cities in Georgia, Rustavi and Telavi, and in two west Georgian towns, Kutaisi and Batumi. 

Several opposition parties ahead of the local elections agreed to nominate joint candidates in 315 out of 664 majoritarian districts for city council spots. 

The ruling party left the EU-mediated agreement, which had put an end to the political crisis caused by the parliamentary elections 2020, in late July due to UNM’s refusal to join the agreement. 

Per the agreement, the GD obliged itself to hold repeat parliamentary elections if it received less than 43% of votes in the October 2 municipal elections but the ruling party said that elections will not take place until the scheduled ones in 2024.