| Summary: | The 2018 Presidential Election of Georgia took place amid a growing tension between the ruling party and the opposition coalition. The main competition was between Salome Zourabichvili, the charismatic repatriate former diplomat from France, and Grigol Vashadze the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and the candidate of the opposition party United National Movement. As expected by the popular mood and a series of exit polls conducted by independent polling organizations, none of the candidates garnered 50% +1 votes to claim outright victory, which meant the elections would be decided in a two-person run-off between Zourabichvili and Vashadze, the two highest scoring candidates.
Here too the results were largely unsurprising with Zourabichvili outclassing Vashadze by 19%-age points, becoming the first woman president in Georgia and the Caucasus region. The elections were hailed by international observers as meeting international standards, although there were occasional irregularities and abuse of administrative resources. The present collection is comprised of leaflet, flyers, special election issue newspapers and other election ephemera that allows researchers specializing in modern Georgia and the Caucasus a unique insight into how electoral politics shape the emergence of a new political culture.
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