Preliminary Results Reveal Three Parties to Gain Seats in Georgia's Parliament

TBILISI- The current preliminary results of Georgia's October 8 Parliamentary Elections, counted by the Central Election Commission (CEC), have revealed that three political parties received enough votes to gain seats in parliament.

The three parties include the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) – 48.668 per cent, opposition United National Movement (UNM) – 27.111 per cent and the ultranationalist, pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots– 5.006 per cent.

According to the preliminary results of the proportional elections, the Georgian Dream will get 44 MPs; the United National Movement will get 27 and the Alliance of Patriots - 6 MPs in the 150-seat Parliament, where 73 MPs will be elected in 73 majoritarian, single-mandate constituencies, while the remaining 77 seats will go to MPs elected in proportional voting, based on party lists.

The GD will get 23 mandates from majoritarian elections which ended in the first round after Georgian Dream candidates won in 23 majoritarian districts. At present, the ruling party has 67 guaranteed seats in parliament.

The remaining 50 majoritarian MPs will be distributed among the parties after the second round is held later this month.

From these 50 majoritarian districts, 18 are located in Tbilisi and 38 districts are in various regions throughout Georgia.

After the results of the previous 2012 elections, the make-up of the national Parliament consisted only of the Georgian Dream and the UNM. The ruling party had 85 seats, while the UNM had 65 MPs in parliament.

The results of party-list votes were annulled in six precincts today.

By Thea Morrison