🇬🇪 Georgia on my mind: Parliamentary elections on 26 October

[DavidB.]

Excellent thread. Saakashvili is GD's most valuable asset. For almost a decade now, UNM's presence has prevented any serious opposition party from challenging GD's position as Georgia's party of government. Saakashvili is completely toxic to the vast majority of Georgians, but he has a sufficiently sizeable following to remain in the picture purely on paper. As long as Saakashvili keeps sticking his head around the corner before every election, Ivanishvili will stay in power.

[DavidB.]

On October 26, Georgia will hold its general election, the Central Election Commission announced yesterday. Perhaps the thread title could be changed to reflect this.

Before 2020, Georgia had an MMM (mixed member majoritarian) system with 77 proportional seats (5% threshold) in one district and 73 FPTP seats in single-member districts with two rounds. In 2020, the country switched to 120 proportional seats (1% threshold) and 30 FPTP seats in single-member districts with two rounds. The decrease of the height of the threshold and the increase of the number of proportional seats led to a much greater number of parties represented in parliament.

This year, the country will switch to a completely proportional system with all 150 MPs elected in one district - but the 5% threshold will come back. The electoral system will therefore essentially be the same as in Slovakia. Because of the fact that Georgia has a lot of parties below or around the threshold, there is also a similar uncertainty regarding the next parliament's composition as there is in Slovakia every time.

There are not many regional disparities regarding the distribution of electoral support in Georgia, which means Georgian Dream used to win almost all (2016) or literally all (2020) FPTP seats. On 40%-50% of the PR vote, this meant GD kept winning majorities in parliament. After this year's election, those days will be over: the likeliest scenario is that GD wins a plurality but will have to build a coalition with other parties. Perhaps in anticipation of the necessity to have GD-friendly "proxies" in the next parliament, GD had a right-wing splitoff named People's Power which still supports the government but takes a harder line on traditional values, NGOs etc.

Georgia has a lot of parties in the 'centrist, pro-EU, liberal, anti-corruption' lane - unless some of them merge, a fairly large percentage of the vote could end up below the threshold. Saakashvili's UNM has already built an alliance with the party Strategy Agmashenebeli, named Victory Platform, but polls indicate this hasn't added any additional votes to the bloc. Unless Saakashvili kisses UNM goodbye forever (and who knows this is sincere?), there will be a market for anti-GD parties that promise about the same things as UNM, but don't carry the baggage of UNM and Saakashvili. Merely a rebranding of UNM probably won't attract those voters. For Georgia and Lelo have already announced they will not enter any electoral alliance involving UNM.

From my point of view, the return of the 5% is a threshold is a pity (a lower threshold would be better), but the election is still going to be very interesting, as the necessity to build multi-party coalitions will probably lead to a profound change in the way politics is done in Georgia.

[DavidB.]

ემიგრაცია is emigration (so not immigration) at 19%. პოლარიცაზია should be polarization at 4%.

I think გადაადგილება თბილისში ("movement in Tbilisi") is about mobility/infrastructural issues within Tbilisi.