From August 1 to September 11, political parties’ spending on advertising reached 727,178 GEL. Costs for TV advertisements totaled 417,210 GEL. The results of the Political Finance Monitoring by the State Audit Office suggest that the European Georgia Party spent the largest amount on the advertisement during the last election period.
In second place with advertising expenses is Unified National Movement (UNM) with 312,210 GEL.
The presidential candidate Salome Zurabishvili spent 17,163 GEL on advertising. This amount was spent during the period of August 22 to September 11; up until August 22 there were no advertisement expenses recorded for Zurabishvili.
The labour party paid 2,125 GEL for advertising during the period of early August to mid-September and Liberal Democrats spent over 3,400 GEL. The independent presidential candidate Besarion Tediashvili is estimated to have spent 4,600 GEL on advertising. Free Georgia spent 742 GEL.
The other political parties do not appear to have advertisement expenditures during the reported period.
From August 22 to September 11, expenditures by both, the political parties and independent candidates reached a total of 830,838 GEL. The United National Movement had the highest expenditure with 344,618 GEL; in second place was European Georgia Party with 198,613 GEL. The independent candidate Salome Zurabishvili is in fifth place with a 29,742 GEL expenditure. These costs include advertisement expenses as well as work trips and salaries.
In 2017, political parties spent 39,490,699 GEL in total during the election period and 13,832,475 GEL of that amount were spent on advertising. Over 4.1 million GEL was spent on TV advertisements. In addition, more than 1.9 million GEL was spent on state-funded political advertisements.
In 2017, the Georgian Dream party spent the largest amount on advertising with 11.6 million GEL, with 3.4 million GEL of that amount going towards television advertisements plus the state-funded political advertisement expenditures of 599,457 GEL. Thus, in total the Georgian Dream Party spent over 12.2 million GEL on advertisements last year.
The costs of advertisements for United National Movement came to 416,937 GEL, with television advertisement coming to 232,772 GEL and 299,821 GEL from state-funded political advertisements.
In 2017, the European Georgia party spent 794, 222 GEL on advertising, with television advertisement coming to 210, 267 GEL and 299,970 GEL for state-funded political advertisement expenditures.
The Alliance of Patriots of Georgia spent 634,397 on advertisement last year and their television advertisement spending came to 326,000 GEL. The state-funds allocated for political advertisement for the party came to 52 766 GEL.
The Christian Democratic Movement party spent 100,000 GEL on advertisement last year; the Labour Party spent over 47,000 GEL, and the Democratic Movement United Georgia Party spent over 46,000 GEL. Civil Platform New Georgia spent 69,024 GEL on advertising.
The Worker’s Socialist Party had the lowest expenditure on advertisement in 2017, spending only 150 GEL.
