Georgia Set to Elect First Woman as President, Exit Poll Shows

Georgia was on course to choose its first woman president in a runoff Wednesday that was also the country’s last direct election for head of state.

French-born Salome Zurabishvili defeated Grigol Vashadze by 55% to 45%, according to an exit poll by Edison Research published by Rustavi-2 TV. The poll had a margin of error of three percentage points. Zurabishvili, 66, was backed by the ruling Georgian Dream party of billionaire kingmaker Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest man, and is the first woman elected as president in any former Soviet republic outside the Baltic states.

Vashadze, 60, who represented an opposition coalition dominated by the United National Movement of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, refused to concede defeat, telling supporters that he would wait for the final official results. He alleged the election had been tainted by vote-rigging and intimidation.

Ivanishvili formed Georgian Dream to oust the UNM from power in 2012, prompting Saakashvili to flee into exile after prosecutors brought charges for alleged abuse of power.

Voter turnout was 47.3 percent at 5.p.m., three hours before polls closed, Georgia’s Central Election Commission said on its website. This was the Caucasus republic’s first-ever runoff for the presidency since all previous elections had been won in the first round.

It’s the last direct election for the largely ceremonial post under constitutional changes approved last year that completed Georgia’s shift to a parliamentary system of government. The new president will serve a six-year term, instead of the current five. In 2024, the president will be chosen by a 300-member electoral college made up of members of parliament and local government representatives, with the term reverting to five years.