TBILISI -- The ruling Georgian Dream party eked out a slim victory in Georgia's pivotal parliamentary elections, preliminary results showed.
Georgian Dream won just under 53 percent of the vote, with 69 percent of the precincts tabulated, according to the first preliminary results that the Central Election Commission released just over an hour after polls closed on October 26.
Four opposition blocs topped the threshold of 5 percent required to gain seats in the parliament, totaling just over 38 percent. The parties had agreed to cooperate as a united front against Georgian Dream, campaigning against the ruling party as an authoritarian, pro-Russian force.
Foreign Policy Focus
The vote was deeply polarizing in Georgia and closely watched around the world, seen as a crucial battle in the country's post-Soviet history.
The campaign messaging from both sides was dominated by foreign policy messages. The opposition accused Georgian Dream of sabotaging relations with the European Union and United States. They promised to restore relations with the West. Georgian Dream, meanwhile, claimed that the opposition parties would drag Georgia into war with Russia and that the ruling party would ensure peace.
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Georgia's Ruling Party 'Very Optimistic' Amid Crucial Vote (Video)
The first foreign leader to congratulate Georgian Dream was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who weighed in even before the first official results were announced. Orban's illiberal domestic politics and West-skeptic foreign policy has been an inspiration to Georgian Dream and he has become a key ally to Georgia's leaders.
Opposition parties had predicted that a high turnout would be good news for them, but that did not turn out to be the case. More than 2 million voters came out, even before voters abroad were tabulated, representing 59 percent of eligible voters. It was the highest turnout since 2012, the year that Georgian Dream came to power.
With the narrow victory, Georgian Dream was denied its stated goal: a constitutional majority, which requires 113 seats in parliament. Exact numbers were not immediately available but if this result holds it would give Georgian Dream under 90 seats in parliament.
That would prevent the party from carrying out one of its most extreme campaign promises: to ban the opposition parties, under the pretext that they provoked Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008.
Election Violations
The vote was plagued by large numbers of apparent violations.
Election monitors recorded dozens of physical altercations outside voting places around the country, as well as other forms of intimidation of voters. There were widespread allegations about the marking fluid that voters were supposed to get on their fingers to prevent them from voting a second time: that the fluid quickly wore off, or that poll workers let in voters who already had the marking.
The election was marred by "violations of vote secrecy, physical violence and threats of violence, interference with the legitimate work of observers and journalists and attacks against them, [and] incidents of illegal campaigning," the watchdog group Georgian Young Lawyers' Association said in a preliminary assessment.
Opposition-friendly exit polls had predicted a strikingly different result, with Georgian Dream taking only 41 or 42 percent of the vote and the collective opposition between 48 and 52. Based on those results, opposition figures declared victory before the first official results were announced. It was not immediately clear how the opposition parties would respond.
The initial results were based on the electronic counting of the votes, which was expected to be completed on election night. A hand-counting of the votes, plus a counting of the precincts that did not have electronic systems, was expected to be completed in the morning of October 27.
Many expected that a Georgian Dream declaration of victory would spark protests, given the deep opposition to the party among many in Tbilisi. The city saw large-scale demonstrations in the spring against Georgian Dream's adoption of a notorious "foreign agent" law.
But as of just before midnight on election night, masses of people were not taking to the streets.