Georgia poll: Landslide predicted
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Saakashvili celebrates with wife Sandra after hearing first results.
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Mikhail Saakashvili claims victory.
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TBILISI, Georgia -- Preliminary results from Georgia's presidential vote indicated a landslide victory for charismatic opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili.
With ballots counted from 1 percent of roughly 3,000 polling places, Saakashvili won 95 percent, Georgian Central Election Commission chairman Zurab Chiaberashvili said Monday
Earlier Chiaberashvili confirmed a massive turnout. About 83 percent of the 2.1 million eligible voters cast ballots, far more than the 50 percent needed to make the election valid, he said.
After the polls closed Sunday, Georgian independent television station Rustavi-2 said its exit survey indicated that Saakashvili had won 85.8 percent of the vote.
Saakashvili, 36, did not wait to celebrate. He waded into a crowd of cheering, flag-waving supporters at a concert hall in the capital Tbilisi, embracing and kissing smiling well-wishers.
Saakashvili led tens of thousands of protesters in November demonstrations that came to be known as the "rose revolution" -- a dramatic event that saw former president Eduard Shevardnadze, on live television, flee out the back door of parliament as the demonstrators rushed in the front.
Shevardnadze resigned and on Sunday said he had cast his ballot for Saakashvili, although he believes the opposition leader still needs more experience. In return, Saakashivili says the ex-president will not face reprisals and that Shevardnadze "will keep his security guards and he'll go on living where he is."
"We've got a very important mandate from our population to clean up the country, to consolidate power here, to make it official, to make it investment-friendly, to make it peaceful and prosperous," Saakashvili told a news conference.
"I'm very happy. This is an unusually high level of unity in Georgian society."
Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer, has pledged to take a hard line against corruption and to work to restore the country's economy, which largely collapsed in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Georgia was also torn by two wars with separatist regions in the 1990s, ransom kidnappings became widespread and relations with its giant neighbor Russia deteriorated.
Shevardnadze: No reprisals
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"One of the fundamental priorities of the new leadership will be the establishment of much closer, warmer ties with the Russian Federation," Saakashvili said, adding that it was time to establish "a new epoch in our relations."
Voters expressed optimism as they cast ballots Sunday. Some carried roses to the polling stations in commemoration of the flowers distributed to police by anti-Shevardnadze protesters in November as a sign of their peaceful intent.
The voting was closely watched by more than 500 international observers to ensure the violations and confusions of the November 2 parliamentary elections didn't recur. Rampant fraud in those elections fueled the movement that secured Shevardnadze's exit.
"It was, as far as I can tell, a normal election," said U.S. Ambassador Richard Miles. "People voted freely."
Final tabulation of the results was not expected until Wednesday, reflecting the laborious task of opening the envelopes and hand-counting the ballots as well as the difficulty of compiling information in a country with shaky communications systems. The new president is to be inaugurated January 25.
Shevardnadze led Georgia after President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was overthrown in January 1992. He was elected president in November 1995.
-- CNN's Ryan Chilcote contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
