Results with 70% of precincts counted give Georgian Dream majority in vote seen as crucial to possible EU membership

Georgia’s ruling party is leading in a pivotal parliamentary election widely seen as a make-or-break vote for the country’s long-held aspiration for EU membership.

Early official results, with 70% of precincts counted, showed the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party had won 53% of the vote, the electoral commission said.

But a united block of pro-western opposition parties have also declared victory, claiming they had clinched a collective majority, setting the stage for a confrontation over the future of the Caucasus country.

Voters in the country of almost 4 million people on Saturday headed to the polls in a watershed election to decide whether the increasingly authoritarian GD party, which has been in power since 2012 and steered the country into a conservative course away from the west and closer to Russia, secures another four-year term.

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