Sep 10, 2008

What Do Georgians Think? Gallup Knows.


These days, the Gallup daily presidential tracking poll gets a lot of press. But less noticed, is a recent poll on Georgian perceptions of their country and its foreign relations.

So what do Georgians think?

For starters, Georgians like the EU and US far more than Russia. But you don't need a Gallup poll to tell you that.

More interestingly, as of June 2008, “nearly two-thirds of Georgian respondents said they were in favor of maintaining good relations with Russia by all means, up 5% from 2007 and 11% from 2006.” No doubt a new poll would show a decidedly different opinion. Yet, that level of openness towards Russia would have been in marked contrast to Saakashviili’s orientation over the same period.

Sadly, Gallup also notes that of all CIS countries, “Georgia had the highest number of respondents who said they or their family had gone hungry in the past 12 months.”

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