TBILISI – The National Democratic Institute (NDI), Jumpstart Georgia and three organizations that jointly initiated an online elections portal– the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) and Transparency International-Georgia (TI-Georgia)– have made previous elections and voter list data available on http://data.electionportal.ge. The website shows results of each election conducted in Georgia since 2008 by a variety of indicators such as turnout, overall results, individual party results and more. The website presents the data through maps which enable analysis over different geographical levels which include regions, districts and precincts. This analysis can have a variety of applications such as helping to identify areas of low turnout in order to target voter mobilization efforts where they might be most effective.

In addition to election results, the site also features a collection and analysis of publicly available data from the 2006 voters’ list to the most recent voters’ list. Indicators such as the number of total voters, average age of voters and duplications are available in a visual map format at the various geographic levels.

At the press conference, NDI/Georgia Country Director Luis Navarro commented: “This site should be of interest to all types of people who are interested in politics. It will help political parties target campaign activities by identifying areas of potential support based on the previous election results. The site is also useful for researchers looking to understand electoral patterns. There is something here for everyone.”

“We are pleased to offer this very detailed dataset, making years of official CEC data available to the public in an easy to navigate and understandable way,” said Nino Lomjaria, Executive Director of ISFED, at the press conference. The portal has been made possible by funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with original funding by the Open Society Institute (OSI). The election data project was financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The website was created by Jumpstart Georgia. The voter list and elections data were obtained by public information requests to the Central Election Commission of Georgia since 2008. The CEC can be found at http://www.cec.gov.ge. All of the original shapefiles outlining electoral geographic boundaries were obtained from the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC). The CRRC can be found at http://www.crrc.ge.
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