2016 Elections Parliament of Georgia

The elections for the 9th Convocation of the Parliament of Georgia took place on 8 and 30 October 2016, and were convincingly won by ruling Georgian which secured a constitutional majority. The party received 48.7% of the proportional vote, winning 115 out of 150 seats after sweeping  71 of the 73 single-mandate constituencies. Only three parties managed to pass the 5% threshold. The turnout in the first round was 55.9%, a 4% decline compared to 2012. The elections were not held in occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia / Tskhinvali Region, in lack of Georgian control over the regions.

Electoral system

The elections were held with a mixed electoral system. A proportional party-list vote with a 5% threshold elected 77 of the 150 MPs and 73 MPs were elected through single mandate majoritarian constituencies with a 50% threshold for the winner. Second round run-offs between the two best performing candidates in single mandate constituencies were scheduled on 30 October 2016 if candidates failed to clear the 50% bar.¹Civil Georgia, Elections Guide, 3 Oct 2016.

Prior to the elections, the single mandate districts were resized after a ruling by the Constitutional Court. The court argued the discrepancy in size between the constituencies, ranging from 6,000 to over 150,000 voters, undermined voting equality, a complaint repeatedly made by the OSCE as well at earlier elections. Henceforth the districts were resized around an average of 48,000 voters with a bandwidth between 42,000 and 53,000 voters. Not only the size was altered, also the threshold to win the district was raised from 30% to 50% of the vote. Due to the change, capital Tbilisi was divided into 22 instead of 10 districts. In sparsely populated regions, districts were merged. Only eight districts remained unchanged.

Calls from the opposition and civil society to move to a fully proportional system were ignored by the ruling Georgian Dream. It said it wanted to settle this for the 2020 elections. A total of 3,513,884 voters were registered. There were 4,816 voters abroad. Also, polling took place in the Georgian peacekeeping bases of Bagram and Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan. Here 1,471 and 150 voters were registered respectively. 

Parties and candidates

Initially, 64 parties and electoral blocs registered at the Central Election Commission for participation in the elections, of which ultimately 35 parties participated in 25 electoral lists (16 parties formed 6 electoral blocs). The other 29 parties were denied participation for a variety of reasons. A total of 3,524 candidates were electable on party-lists, of which 37% were female. A total of 816 candidates took part in the 73 single-mandate races, among them were 143 female and 53 independents.²CESKO Election Report, 2016, page 9-10³Civil Georgia, List of Majoritarian MP Candidates, 1 Oct 2016. Georgian Dream and United National Movement had candidates in 72 out of 73 constituencies. GD supported the nominally independent Salome Zourabishvili in the Tbilisi Mtsatsminda district. UNM lacked a candidate in district 38 that united the municipalities of Dusheti, Kazbegi and Tianeti.

Results

The elections were won by the ruling Georgian Dream, which expanded its majority in parliament with 30 seats to 115, enough for a constitutional majority. The victory was carried by a sweep of the single mandate constituencies, winning 71 out of the 73 districts. Virtually all Georgian Dream coalition partners from the previous government didn’t make it into parliament as they couldn’t clear the 5% threshold. The Industrialists were the exception, winning one single mandate district in the second round against a candidate of Georgian Dream.

Georgian Dream received 48.7% of the proportional vote, 6% lower than in 2012, taking 44 of the 77 proportional seats. Its main competitor, the United National Movement (UNM) of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, came in second with 27.1% of the vote, a loss of more than 13%, enough for 27 seats. The only other party to pass the 5% electoral threshold (narrowly) was the nativist and pro-Russian Alliance of Georgian Patriots, entering parliament for the first time with 6 seats. In total, 19% of the proportional vote was lost, as these were on parties that didn’t clear the threshold.

Georgian Dream won 23 out of 73 single mandate districts in the first round. For the remaining 50 districts a second round was required, which took place on 30 October 2016. In 44 of these districts, Georgian Dream candidates faced UNM. In Mtatsminda district of capital Tbilisi, the independent Salome Zourabishvili was supported by Georgian Dream. She faced a candidate of UNM, which race she won. In Gori, the leader of the Free Democrats, former UN envoy and defense minister Irakli Alasania made it to the second round, but withdrew from the race and retired from politics. The wife of former President Saakashvili, Sandra Roelofs, was elected through the party list of UNM, but was also a candidate in the single mandate constituency of the western city of Zugdidi. However, she withdrew from participating in the second round, accusing the elections were rigged in the first round. After the elections she renounced her parliamentary mandate. Georgian Dream managed to win 48 districts in the second round, securing a total of 71 of the 73 district seats.

The table below shows the official results released by the Central Election Commission CESKO (full table in Appendix 1).

Appendix

References and footnotes

• 1
  Civil Georgia, Elections Guide, 3 Oct 2016.
• 2
  CESKO Election Report, 2016, page 9-10
• 3
  Civil Georgia, List of Majoritarian MP Candidates, 1 Oct 2016.
• 4
  14 other parties on the ballot received a total of 24,510 votes (or 1.4%)
• 5
  CESKO states in overviews of official results 2,678 invalid votes – which is extremely low comparatively. However, this is a typo – the preceding 6 is missing. The correct number is 62,678 invalid proportional votes, as can be seen in invalid votes table on page 144 of the full election report linked in footer.
• 6
  There seems to be 2,744 votes missing from the equation in the CESKO reporting.
• 7
  Dashboard 1st round
• 8
  Dashboard 2nd round
• 9
  Report On The Parliamentary Elections of Georgia 2016 (pdf), Final results page 182-190