Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Following lacklustre governmental use of police units to defend dozens of journalists and LGBT activists from organised serious assaults in Tbilisi on 05/07/21; and the GG's withdrawal from an already-signed agreement with the EU about electoral processes in the approaching elections, there are 'reports that the Georgian PM has been denied official visits to 3 EU Baltic states'. And, less reliably, that he is now also persona non grata in Washington for the same reasons.
https://civil.ge/archives/435440
The GD have really blotted their copy books with Western nations over the last month. This might explain why their suddenly being sohelpful to American Frontera.
A new poll has come out today. As is usually the case, this polling info is taken from Wikipedia and the source was written in Georgian. Fortunately, even without knowing Georgian, a lot can be gleaned by comparing the numbers on Wiki with those on the source. (To see Wiki's election page, go to www.wikipedia.org and look for '2020 Georgian parliamentary election'. To see the source, go to 'European Georgia' in the 'Pollster' column, and hit the blue arrows. ).
First of all, some big notes of caution with this one. The poll was apparently compiled by 'European Georgia'. I don't know any polling organisation by that name, but it is the name of one of the parties (EG), which is said to have increased it's share of the vote in this poll. There is a big decline shown in the GD share, and the joint share of the vote assigned to 'Don't Know' and 'Won't say' has halved. In fact, if all those who have said they'll vote actually do so, there will be an 84% turnout, which seems very unlikely.
As before, I've taken out the 'Don't Knows' and 'Wont Says', and recalculated the % on the amended figures. The number of proportional seats is what would be won if those figures matched the vote on the day.
Here's the figures showing Party id. then % (after exclusion of non-voters) then Number of proportional seats won.
GD 32.3 39
UNM 21.9 26
EG 13.9 17
SA 6.3 8
Lelo 6.0 7
SLP 4.9 6
Girchi 4.7 6
APG 1.7 2
Others(3) 8.3 10
The split between GD & APG/Opposition in terms of % in this poll would be 34/66.
The split in terms of proportional MPs would be 41/80 (1 too many due to rounding error).
As is usually the case, the source of this info from Wikipedia is written in Georgian. (To see Wiki's election page, go to www.wikipedia.org and look for '2020 Georgian parliamentary election'. To see the source, press the blue arrows next to 'European Georgia'). In spite of the language difficulties, a lot can be understood by comparing the Wiki numbers with those on the source.
First of all, some notes of caution. This poll was apparently compiled by 'European Georgia'. I don't know of any polling organisation of that name, but it is the name of one of the parties (EG), which is stated to have increased it's share of the vote in this poll; although, to be fair, most of the other parties have increased their share too.
These gains are primarily at the expense of non-voters/ won't sayers, whose joint numbers have halved. (It should perhaps be pointed out that if all those who said they were going to vote did so, the turnout would be 84%, which seems very unlikely!).
Here are the figures. The %'s have been calculated by removing the non-voters and wont-says, and then turning the results into percentages of the total who have given a voting preference. The number of proportional seats is then calculated from those percentages.
Party id. Then % (after exclusion of non-voters) Then Number of proportional seats won.
GD 32.3 39
UNM 21.9 26
EG 13.9 17
SA 6.3 8
Lelo 6.0 7
SLP 4.9 6
Girchi 4.7 6
APG 1.7 2
Others(3) 8.3 10
GD(GD + APG)/Opposition % totals 34/66.
Proportional MPs 41/80 (1 too many in total due to rounding error).
Two opinion polls have appeared since I last wrote about them. The first comes from Edison. Must give a warning here. Looking on Wiki at the list of previous polls, Edison always gives GD a much higher mark-up than the other polling companies. In their previous polls (excluding their first one), they always give GD a % in the mid to upper 30's. The other polling companies usually place them in the 20's. Edison are an international company with a decent reputation - but it does look iffy.
(To see Wiki's election page, go to www.wikipedia.org and look for '2020 Georgian parliamentary election').
These are the figures. They include a new party, Strategy Aghmashenebili(SA), which is already the 4th largest, and 2 other tinies (shown as others), which don't show up on the Wiki page as Wiki haven't changed their display to be able to show them! :-
Party id. % (after exclusion of non-voters) Number of proportional seats won if % is correct
GD 47.4 57
UNM 22.4 27
EG 6.6 8
SA 5.3 6
SLP 3.9 5
APG 3.9 5
Girchi 2.6 3
Lelo 2.6 3
DMUG 1.3 2
Citizens 1.3 2
Others(4) 2.6 3
GD/Opposition % total 51.3/48.7
" MPs 62/58
The next poll is by IPSOS.
Although GD are up here on the previous IPSOS polls, their nasty little friends, APG, have declined, and so there is very little change in the GD/Opposition ratio. Here are the figures, ordered as above :-
GD 39.7 48
UNM 27.0 32
EG 8.0 10
SA 7.7 9
SLP 3.2 4
APG 1.8 2
DMUG 1.1 1
Citizens 0.8 1
Gerchi 4.1 5
Lelo 4.1 5
Others (1) 2.6 2
GD/Opposition % total 41.5/59.5
" MPs 50/69 (1 lost in rounding).
So, depending on the pollster, it looks like either a safe opposition victory; or a small GD one. Either way, it should be a vast improvement on the current crushing GD majority. Fingers crossed.