Preliminary Results: Zurabishvili 40.2%, Vashadze 36.35%

Vote count is underway at over 3,705 polling stations to reveal Georgia’s last directly elected President for six year-term.

According to the returns from 1517 (40.9%) out of 3,705 precincts, the ruling party-endorsed candidate Salome Zurabishvili and the UNM-led coalition’s Grigol Vashadze garnered 40.2% and 36.35% of votes, respectively.

A candidate will be declared an outright winner if s/he garners more than half of all valid votes cast. If no candidate garners more than half of the votes, the runoff has to be held two weeks after the CEC publishes the final vote tally of the first round,  that is no later than 20 days after the Election Day. This places the latest possible date of the runoff on December 1, 2018.

Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze has confirmed, based on preliminary precinct data, that the Presidential elections will now go into a runoff.

Davit Bakradze of the European Georgia, who finished third, with 10.3% of the votes according to the current count, already threw his weight behind Vashadze.

1,637,956 voters cast ballot in the elections, accounting for 46.74% of the total number of voters, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC).