Vashadze Wins Big Cities, Foreign Vote

The final vote count from all the 3,705 precincts revealed that the top two major contenders – the ruling party-endorsed candidate Salome Zurabishvili and the UNM-led coalition’s Grigol Vashadze will now face in the runoff with 38.64% (615,624) and 37.74% (601,188) of votes, respectively.

The detailed data of the vote tally, which is available at a special website of the Central Election Commission (CEC), reveals that overall, Grigol Vashadze has been leading the presidential race in Georgia’s major cities as well as abroad.

The UNM-led opposition leader garnered the majority of votes in the self-governing cities Kutaisi 46.99% (29,585), Rustavi 47.14% (21,775), Poti 39.82% (6,775) and Batumi 44.82% (27,676) of votes.

He was highly supported in some of the former self-governing cities, among them Telavi 50.12% (14,341), Mtskheta 41.34% (8,939), Gori 42.5% (20,994) and Zugdidi 49.42% (23,526) as well.

Salome Zurabishvili received, 28.68% (18,058), 24.34% (11,242), 34.11% (5,803) and 33.88% (20,919) in Kutaisi, Rustavi, Poti and Batumi, respectively.

She came second in Telavi 32.79% (9,383), Mtskheta 36.34% (7,856), Gori 34.61% (17,099) and Zugdidi 33.88% (16,129) as well.

Votes from ten districts in Tbilisi divided five-to-five between Vashadze and Zurabishvili, with 153,202 and 149,044 of votes in total, respectively.

The vote count in polling stations opened abroad also showed Vashadze leading in the presidential race with 52.27% (2,861) of the votes. The ruling party-endorsed candidate came second with 22.49% (1,231), followed by European Georgia’s Davit Bakradze with 6.92% (379), New Political Center-Girchi’s Zurab Japaridze 5.7% (312) and Free Democrats/Development Movement’s Davit Usupashvili 4.92% (269).

1,637,956 out of the 3,518,890 eligible voters cast ballot in yesterday’s elections, accounting for 46.74% of the total number of voters, according to CEC. 14,808 of all eligible voters registered abroad were served by 59 polling stations in 44 countries. Two additional polling stations were opened in Afghanistan for Georgian troops stationed in the country.

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