In June 2021, NDI launched a new website - ElectionsData.ge - that presents the final results, voter turnout, and other data from every Georgian election since 2008. The site presents public election and voter data, generously provided to NDI by Georgia’s Central Election Commission, to allow Georgian and English-language users to explore, analyze, and present Georgian election data through maps, graphs and downloadable formats.
NDI supports evidence-based and responsive decision-making, in part, by providing data to Georgians in and out of politics. One way NDI achieves this goal is through research, such as its open and transparent public opinion polls that help Georgia’s leaders and public to get a sense of the priorities and beliefs of their neighbors. The Georgia Elections Data website is another example of NDI’s commitment to open data, and presents what could be thought of as the largest public opinion polls in Georgian history, which are its elections.
For Georgia’s political parties and independent politicians, past election results data can guide their strategic decision-making by helping them understand where their supporters are, who they might be and what they care about. For Georgian civil society and activists, turnout and voter list data, especially when disaggregated by gender or age and available at the granular level of precincts and districts, can help identify low-turnout areas for “get out the vote” efforts or high-turnout areas for campaigning.
This site also aligns with NDI’s global efforts to promote openness in government, including government data, so that citizens, civil society, and researchers can ensure public institutions are more transparent, responsive and accountable. In particular, this project aligns with NDI’s Open Election Data Initiative by sharing data in ways that make the election data freely and easily used, reused and redistributed by members of the general public.
The site’s database includes Georgia’s presidential, parliamentary, municipal, and Adjaran supreme council elections since 2008, including last year’s parliamentary elections and the various interim and by-elections that take place between regular elections.
The website offers customizable maps that present each election’s results and all other data at the national, district and precinct level. In addition to the number of votes received by electoral subjects, including party lists and individual candidates, the site also displays turnout and voter list data. This includes the number, age group, and gender of Georgia’s eligible voters, as well as data on voters who showed up to the polls. This even includes the number of men and women who voted on election day, which the CEC has gathered since 2014.
Users can customize the website’s maps to suit their analysis. For example, where a specific political party is most popular or the turnout of women voters the greatest can be shown at each geographic level (national, district & precinct) through a “heat map,” a visualization technique that displays the variable’s magnitude through the progressive intensity of a selected color. If one heat map isn’t enough, users can compare two or more maps at the same time.
NDI encourages everyone, in and outside of Georgia, to learn more about Georgia’s elections through this new interactive website. For researchers or those interested in parsing the election data in a more hands-on fashion, the site’s Data page provides Georgian and English-language downloads for each election in user-friendly XLS and comma-separated values (CSV) formats; if you only want to analyze certain variables, you can customize your dataset on the respective election’s page.
NDI is actively introducing the tool to interested partners in politics and civil society in Georgia, who can leverage the data in order to target voter outreach or get out the vote efforts, and for other members of the public to conduct general research on election results and voter trends.
Author: Cole Speidel is a Program Officer on the Eurasia team
NDI is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all. NDI envisions a world where democracy and freedom prevail, with dignity for all.
