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Forecast for October 28th, 2020
Two days before the 2020 Parliamentary Elections of Georgia, Pollster.ge publishes its fifth and final forecasts. Overall, the ruling Georgian Dream party will face challenges in forming the majority in the parliament, while elections most probably will be decided in single-member districts.
Our previous forecast showed that ratings for the ruling party were diminishing. The trend was also maintained in the most recent polls too. The weighted averages model indicates that the ruling party’s support shrunk from [47% to 42%](
- October 14th, as ratings have improved for the opposition. Nonetheless, only the United National Movement polls in two-digit numbers.
Seemingly, time works against the Georgian Dream. We have explained why the aggravated epidemiological conditions might have deteriorated their poll numbers. In parallel with the growing number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, support for the Georgian Dream diminished. Presumably, the hostage crisis in Zugdidi contributed to the declining support for the ruling party. While numbers are shrinking, changes are not that dramatic to prevent the Georgian Dream from winning proportional polls.
Our Bayesian model indicates the same. Instead of forecasting the latest public opinion poll numbers, we estimated weighted averages of all polls in our updated model. Nonetheless, the dynamics are somewhat expected: as the Georgian Dream has almost no chance of passing through the 50% barrier, the party is highly likely to win enough votes for passing through the closing 40.5% threshold. We project that the party has about an 80% chance of doing so. Other political groups have no chance to win over the Georgian Dream or squeak through the closing threshold.
Another question is, how will smaller political parties do in proportional voting. This might be important if there is a necessity to form a governing coalition. Those parties which are already in the parliament are projected to win seats again. Besides, “Strategy Aghmashenebeli,” “Lelo,” “Girchi,” and the Labor Party are highly likely to end up in the parliament. Nonetheless, only “Strategy Aghmashenebeli” and “European Georgia” have reasonable chances of having enough seats for having a separate faction, as does “Lelo.”
If our projections are correct, it is highly likely that voting in majoritarian elections will decide who will form the government. As it stands now, the Georgian Dream needs at least 27 majoritarian seats to form a simple majority. Unfortunately, we are unable to forecast majoritarian races. Therefore, our understanding is based on the experience of previous elections. As the latter shows us, ruling parties almost always have an incumbent advantage in majoritarian races.
The methodology behind these predictions is available here. The replication code and dataset used above is available via Github.
Previous forecasts:
About
Pollster.ge is an independent, non-commercial, non-partisan project that aims at collecting, systematizing, and processing open-access polling data in Georgia.The project is an independent initiative and is by no means linked to any of our employers. Election forecasts are based on statistical modeling of raw data through transparent methodology. Authors are not responsible for the quality of the raw data.