Leaked Poll Gives Ruling Party Strong Lead

Fragments of a new public opinion survey, leaked to the press, show ruling party, National Movement, with a wide lead over the opposition coalition led by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Results of political ratings are part of a broader public opinion survey, fielded by Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC) for U.S. National Democratic Institute (NDI) from February 22 to March 5, which also involves general public attitudes towards various domestic and foreign policy issues.

It is a policy of NDI Tbilisi office to make public only the part of its commissioned poll, which shows public attitudes towards various issues, but the segments of the survey dealing with rating of political parties are never released publicly, although they are presented privately to the parties. But, as usually, those ratings are leaked to the press by parties.

It is also the policy of NDI Tbilisi office to refute any press report misrepresenting the poll data.

On March 27, the Georgian news agency, InterPressNews (IPN), reported segments of the NDI-commissioned survey dealing with political parties.

No statement from NDI Tbilisi office, refuting this report by IPN, followed.

According to this report 47% of respondents say they would vote for the ruling National Movement party if the parliamentary elections were held tomorrow, followed by Ivanishvili-led opposition coalition with 10%.

Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM), a leading party in small parliamentary minority group, has 3% of support, a two percent short to clear threshold required for endorsing candidates to the Parliament under the party-list, proportional contest.

According to the same poll, also seen by Civil.ge, 23% of respondents are undecided, 10% refused to answer and 5% said they would vote for none of the parties.

Asked whom they would like to see as Georgia’s President, 29% of respondents chose a candidate (not specified in the list) from the ruling party, followed by Ivanishvili with 12% and an unspecified candidate from the Christian-Democratic Movement with 5%.

The survey represents face-to-face interviews with a nationwide representative sample of 3,161 respondents with margin of error 3%.