US polling firms find strange numbers in Georgian election data
Two American polling companies point out weird math in Georgian election results that gave victory to the ruling party. Opposition groups plan street demos while state starts checking fraud claims
Last weekʼs Georgian parliamentary vote shows weird math that dont add up‚ say US experts. The ruling Georgian Dream party claims a big win but something looks off-base in the counting
Two well-known polling firms – Edison Research and HarrisX – found major red flags in the numbers: theres a 13-point gap between exit polls and official counts (which is way too big to be normal). In some far-off places the ruling party got super-high scores – like 80-90% which seems fishy
The election was super-important for this ex-Soviet country; it was about picking between two paths: getting closer to Europe or staying in Russias orbit. The ruling Bidzina Ivanishviliʼs party (which got 54% in official count) says everything was fair-and-square but international watchers saw some not-cool stuff going on:
- ballot-box stuffing
- voters getting pressured
- people getting paid for votes
In one place called Marneuli (a town with lots of ethnic-Azeris) exit polls showed Georgian Dream at 40% but somehow they ended up with double that in official results; local officials already confirmed some funny-business happened there
The countrys pro-West president says its all fake and people arent happy – thousands showed up in the streets of Tbilisi to say so. More street action is coming up next week; meanwhile state prosecutors (after getting nudged by Western countries) started looking into whether someone messed with the vote count
