The results, with almost all precincts counted, were a blow for pro-Western Georgians who had cast the election as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia and an opposition aiming to fast-track integration with Europe.
President Salome Zourabichvili urged people to take to the streets to protest against the results of Saturday’s disputed parliamentary election, which the electoral commission said the ruling party had won.
The ruling Georgian Dream party, of which Zourabichvili is a fierce critic, clinched nearly 54 percent of the vote, the commission said, as opposition parties contested the outcome and vote monitors reported significant violations.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States joined calls from observers for a full probe.
“Going forward, we encourage Georgia’s political leaders to respect the rule of law, repeal legislation that undermines fundamental freedoms, and address deficiencies in the electoral process together,” Blinken said in a statement.
Earlier, the European Union urged Georgia to swiftly and transparently investigate the alleged irregularities in the vote.
“The EU recalls that any legislation that undermines the fundamental rights and freedoms of Georgian citizens and runs counter to the values and principles upon which the EU is founded, must be repealed,” the European Commission said in a joint statement with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
Zourabichvili, a former Georgian Dream ally who won the 2018 presidential vote as an independent, urged Georgians to protest in the center of the capital, Tbilisi, on Monday evening, to show the world “that we do not recognize these elections.”
For years, Georgia was one of the most pro-Western countries to emerge from the Soviet Union, with polls showing many Georgians disliking Russia for its support of two breakaway regions of their country.
Russia defeated Georgia in their brief war over the rebel province of South Ossetia in 2008.
The election result poses a challenge to the EU’s ambition to expand by bringing in more former Soviet states.
Last week, Moldova narrowly approved its EU accession in a vote Moldovan officials said was marred by Russian interference.
Georgia's prime minister has hailed a "landslide" election result, rejecting allegations of vote-rigging and violence.
"Irregularities happen everywhere," Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party told the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in an exclusive interview.
Official preliminary results from Georgia's election commission gave the ruling Georgian Dream an outright majority of 54%, despite exit polls for opposition TV channels suggesting four opposition parties had won.
Georgia's pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has condemned the "total falsification" of the vote and called for opposition supporters to rally outside parliament on Monday.
Election observers have suggested that the number of vote violations may have affected the result. However, the prime minister insisted that out of 3,111 polling stations, there had been incidents in "just a couple of precincts".
Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian, passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-government groups who receive foreign funding and the LGBT community. The European Union has responded by freezing Georgia's bid to join the EU, accusing it of "democratic backsliding".
However, one EU leader, Hungary's Viktor Orban, has been especially quick to congratulate the party on its fourth term and is due to travel to Georgia on Monday.
Georgian Dream says it is keen to kickstart talks on reviving its EU bid, but the sight of Orban arriving in Tbilisi two days after a contested election is unlikely to go down well in Brussels.
Georgian presidency Georgia's President Salome Zourabichvili, surrounded by opposition politicians, described the election as a "Russian special operation"Georgian presidency
In an initial statement on Sunday night, the head of the European Council of EU leaders, Charles Michel, said "alleged irregularities must be seriously clarified and addressed" and called for a swift, transparent and independent investigation.
"Of course we have to address these irregularities happening on the day of the election or before," the Georgian prime minister told the BBC. "But the general content of the elections was in line with legal principles and the principle of democratic elections."
The four opposition groups have refused to recognise the election result, condemning it as falsified, and they have accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of stealing the vote.
They will now hold 61 seats in the 150-seat parliament, while Georgian Dream will have 89 - a majority but not big enough to enact the kind of constitutional change it wanted, to carry out its threat to ban opposition parties.
Two of the four opposition groups, Coalition for Change and United National Movement, have said they will boycott parliament.
Surrounded by leaders of the opposition, Georgia's president said the vote could not be recognised and accused Russia of interfering in the election.
In his BBC interview, Kobakhidze accused the opposition of lying, arguing that they had also said the vote had been falsified in 2016, 2020 and 2021.
"Of course they have now no other way, so they have to tell their supporters that either they were lying or the government rigged the elections."
An electronic vote-counting system was used for the first time on Saturday, and the prime minister said that made the election impossible to rig: "There is zero space for manipulation."
The chairman of Georgia's election commission who oversaw the new system hailed the vote as largely peaceful and free, but a very different picture has emerged from monitoring groups that have presented their initial findings.
Georgia's Isfed group reported a litany of violations, including bribery, intimidation and ballot-stuffing, and said the result "cannot be seen as truly reflecting the preferences of Georgian voters".
Per Eklund, a former EU ambassador who was part of the National Democratic Institute delegation, said it was clear the pre-election period in particular had failed to meet democratic standards.
"Voter intimidation... up to and on election day severely undermined the process," he said.
Kobakhidze also used his BBC interview to deny the opposition's accusation that the government was pro-Russian and "pro-Putinist". He said they had been trying to damage the government's reputation with Georgia's 3.7 million population, which is overwhelmingly pro-European.
Russian commentators have widely welcomed Georgian Dream's victory as an indication that Georgia will begin to pivot back to Moscow.
However, the prime minister said that Georgia was the only country in its region with no diplomatic relations with Russia, because of Russia's occupation of 20% of Georgian territory since the five-day war in 2008.
