TBILISI, October 5 – Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze has secured a decisive victory in Georgia’s local elections, winning 71.6% of the vote according to preliminary results released by the Central Election Commission (CEC).
With 581 out of 584 polling stations counted, covering 99.5% of the city’s precincts, Kaladze, the candidate of the ruling Georgian Dream party, received 214,575 votes. His nearest rival, Irakli Kupradze of the Lelo–For a Strong Georgia alliance, came in a distant second with 37,257 votes (12.4%). Iago Khvichia of the libertarian party Girchi followed with 22,535 votes (7.5%), while Zurab Makharadze of the Conservatives for Georgia received 12,356 votes (4.1%). Other candidates each received less than 2%.
CEC Chairman Giorgi Kalandarishvili said the election was conducted “peacefully, orderly, and freely,” calling it a milestone in Georgia’s shift toward electronic voting. For the first time on such a wide scale, electronic vote-counting machines were used at more than two-thirds of polling stations across the country.
Kalandarishvili praised the new technology for speeding up the vote count and ensuring transparency. “The process unfolded without significant irregularities,” he said, adding that results were available just over an hour after polls closed. The CEC confirmed that manual counts are also being conducted to cross-check the electronic tallies, with final protocols to be published online.
He thanked Georgian voters for what he called their “high civic responsibility,” as well as the election officials, observers, and media outlets who contributed to what the commission described as an election meeting “high international standards.”
Smartmatic, an international technology vendor, partnered with Georgia’s election administration on the modernization process, while U.S.-based firm Pro V&V carried out an independent audit of the voting machines for the second time, certifying their compliance.
The CEC said detailed results and data from both electronic and traditional polling stations will be published on its official results portal, results.cec.gov.ge, once verification is complete.
