Opposition Calls to Snub Exit Polls

Although no plans have been yet officially announced about exit polls on the election day, May 21, the nine-party opposition bloc has already called on supporters to boycott possible exist polls.

“Say No to exist polls,” Levan Gachechiladze, leader of the nine-party bloc told supporters at a meeting on May 8. “Say no in order not to let them rig election results beforehand.”

A similar appeal to supporters was made earlier by Davit Gamkrelidze, the leader of New Rights Party – part of the nine-party bloc.

Exist polls, commissioned by four networks – the Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB), Rustavi 2 TV, Mze TV and Adjara TV – were conducted for the January 5 presidential elections.

Meanwhile, the most of the opposition parties have also criticized and said they did not trust the ruling party-commissioned public opinion survey results released earlier this week.

According to the survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (GQR) between April 14-20 the ruling National Movement Party has 44% of the vote, followed by the nine-party opposition bloc with 12%; the newly set up Christian Democratic Party, led by ex Imedi TV anchor Giorgi Targamadze is third with 11%, followed by the Labor Party with 7% and the Republican Party with 4%.

Only the Christian-Democratic Party said it believed results of the survey were close to real picture.