| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On the evening of October 1st, only a few minutes after the polls closed for the parliamentary elections, Tbilisi and other Georgian cities were the sites of widespread celebrations of the type usually reserved for major political upheavals and victories over Russia in soccer or rugby. Cars honked their horns while waving the blue-and-gold flag of the Georgian Dream party; thousands of people clogging the streets were yelling enthusiastically. Georgian Dream was already staging a large victory rally on Tbilisi's Freedom Square on the basis of an exit poll done by a major American polling firm that showed their candidates leading those of the government's United National Movement (UNM) party by a margin of roughly two to one, which meant that President Mikheil Saakashvili had been defeated at the polls and that a major change had come to Georgia.
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