Ruling party head slams IRI as polls put party approval at 25%

Irakli Kobakhidze, the head of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Thursday slammed the International Republican Institute for providing “incorrect election data” over the past 12 years, following the organisation’s latest survey this week, which put the GD approval at 25 percent ahead of the 2024 Parliamentary elections, followed by the United National Movement with 13 percent support. 

 

Kobakhidze claimed the polls – which said the rating of all other parties in the country were under five percent – were expected to be “unrealistic, similar to IRI’s other polls over the years”, and pledged his party would provide a data to contrast the figures provided by various polls over the years with the election results. 

 

Levan Khabeishvili, the chair of the UNM, said the polls had “proved” his party enjoyed “high public support”. 

 

“All studies and polls confirm that the Russian party [in reference to the GD] can be defeated by a large margin if small, pro-Western opposition behaves strategically correctly”, he claimed.