TBILISI — Claiming a comfortable majority of 54%, the ruling Georgian Dream party — increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russia leaning — declared itself the winner of Saturday’s parliamentary elections. But the result has sparked major push back contestation— not just from the president and opposition parties, but from independent election observers, the United States, and several European Union countries, who have all criticized the electoral process.
An analysis of the results by Die Zeit reveals multiple signs suggesting the ruling party may have tampered with the election.
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On election day, the renowned U.S.-based polling and analytics company Edison Research conducted a post-election survey of almost 15,000 voters in 115 polling stations. According to their data, Georgian Dream was supported by only 41% of the electorate. Other prior polls painted an even bleaker picture for the ruling party, with results below those seen in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
Data from the state election commission, prepared by the Electoral Graphics portal, shows that voting machines were used in 2,255 of the 3,101 constituencies. These machines count the votes and send results directly to the capital, and according to Western election observers, they’re almost impossible to manipulate. Die Zeit‘s calculations show that Georgian Dream typically fared worse in constituencies where voting machines were used compared to those where votes were counted manually.
Turnout factors
Die Zeit‘s team drew two curves depicting the voters’ behavior on the Georgian Elections: one representing urban voting districts and the other rural ones. In large cities, the distribution of votes is relatively unremarkable. However, in rural areas, there is an unusually high number of districts where the ruling party’s vote count significantly exceeds the national average. The analysis follows an idea by the software developer Levan Kvirkvelia .
It’s a tell-tale sign of voter manipulation.
Roman Udot, an election analyst and Russian exile who runs the Electoral Graphics portal, also examined the election results. “In theory, a party’s share of the vote shouldn’t depend on turnout,” Udot explains. “But I noticed that the ruling party often achieved unusually high results in areas with very high voter turnout.”
This pattern, already seen in Russian elections, is usually a tell-tale sign of voter manipulation. On Wednesday, the Georgian investigative portal iFact released a report documenting implausible vote surges for Georgian Dream in several districts.
While purely statistical analyses rarely provide concrete proof of election fraud, numerous reports of incidents at polling stations add weight to the suspicion. “These are voting patterns that seem too unlikely to occur naturally,” write political scientists Allen Hicken and Walter R. Mebane from the University of Michigan in an analytical piece on this election.
Pressure on voters
Let’s be clear about this: the allegations are generally not about direct interference in the recording of votes, but rather about pressure before voting. But whether it is the threat of professional consequences for state employees (teachers, police officers, civil servants may have been pushed to vote for the “right” party), or the buses driving from polling station to polling station, or the gangs of thugs hanging around polling stations to intimidate opposition politicians, these tactics seem extensive.
The Georgian Dream had cameras installed
It is also striking that the Georgian Dream had cameras installed in around 2,500 polling stations. This is not generally prohibited, but nevertheless contributes to an atmosphere of control, a sort of “Big Brother is watching you” feeling.
Many of the incidents are documented in reports by independent organizations. The election observers describe a perfidious but intelligent system of influencing the election. Intimidation and vote-buying are much harder to prove than irregularities in the polling station itself, or even election fraud.
These are “unfair conditions” that election observers can identify, but from which no direct conclusions can be drawn as to how much they might have influenced the election result in percentage points, says Frank Schwabe. The SPD politician was traveling to Georgia as an election observer.
The electoral commission, which is said to be close to the Georgian Dream, recently announced that it would recount the votes in 14% of polling stations. The counting of votes has received the least complaints from national and international election observers. “It’s not really about the outcome of the elections,” said Nino Dolidze, head of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy in Tbilisi, “but rather about the processes that led to those unexpected results”
Foreign influence
The parliamentary speaker and politician of the Georgian Dream Party, Shalva Papuashvili, rejects the criticism of election observers calling it “pseudo-evidence” and speaks of an artificial “creation of a wave of protests and unrest in Georgia,” alluding to the Russian conspiracy theory according to which all anti-government protests in the post-Soviet space are coup attempts controlled from the West .
Georgian Dream adopted laws following the Russian model.
The precise role of Russia in this remains murky. Georgian Dream is widely seen as pro-Russian and has recently adopted laws following the Russian model, including legislation against “foreign influence” and a restrictive law targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Meanwhile, the opposition seeks to align Georgia with the EU. This fundamental question of geopolitical loyalty was the central theme of the election.
Pro-European President Salome Zurabishvili called the election manipulation a “Russian special operation,” with “modern technologies” allegedly used to “cover up” the deceit. However, she did not provide concrete evidence to support these claims.
The public prosecutor’s office, acting at the electoral commission’s request, summoned her for questioning on Thursday. Zurabishvili, however, told journalists on Wednesday night in Tbilisi that she has no intention of complying, arguing that the prosecutor’s office should investigate the indications of electoral tampering “instead of asking me for proof.”
