Opposition coalition leads 2012 Georgian parliamentary elections

Georgia's opposition coalition Georgian Dream is leading the country's just-concluded parliamentary elections, according to the exit polls of a U.S.- based exit poll specialist company Edison Research and a Germany- based market research company GfK on Monday. The Edison Research exit polled Georgian Dream as having 51 percent of the votes as of 16:00 Georgian time, or four hours before the conclusion of the election day voting process. The ruling United National Movement party was polled to have 41 percent of the votes. Other political parties in the 2012 election race were polled as the Christian DemocraticMovement party having 4 percent of votes, the Labor Party having 1 percent and other groups jointly having 3 percent. GfK exit polled Georgian Dream as having 35 percent of votes against 30 percent of votes to the United National Movement. The Edison Research, a U.S. company based in New Jersey, will pronounce its final results of exit polls later on Monday. The American pollster is conducting exit polls on behalf of Georgian television networks of Imedi and Rustavi2. Edison Research has trained interviewers for 75 of the 3,719 polling stations throughout the South Caucasus country and the choice of polling stations was made from a random, stratified probability sample of all of the polling locations throughout the country. The full Edison Research exit poll survey is expected to include some 7,500 voters. The German market research company is the world's fifth largest such company which was commissioned by another Georgian television network Georgian Public Broadcasting company to conduct the exit polls for the 2012 parliamentary elections.