98% Counted: Zurabishvili 59.62%, Vashadze 40.38%

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

According to the returns from 3,651 (98.54%) precincts, the ruling party-endorsed candidate Salome Zurabishvili and the opposition coalition’s Grigol Vashadze garnered 59.62% (1,143,111 ballots) and 40.38% (774,468) of the votes, respectively.

This means Zurabishvili, who got 615,624 votes in the first round of the polls, almost doubled her results, while Vashadze, who got 601,188 votes in the first round, finished worse off than predicted, scoring approximately as many votes that a mechanical addition of the votes from his opposition ally, the third-placed David Bakradze (174,849 votes in the first round) would suggest.

According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), 1,975,845 voters cast ballot in the elections, accounting for 56.23% of the total number of voters.

Voter turnout was significantly higher than in the first round of presidential elections on October 28, when 1,647,878 voters turned out at polling stations, representing 46.83% of registered voters.

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