ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now, this election news from a small place with strategic importance beyond its size. No, not another update from New Hampshire. Exit polls show voters in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia re-elected their president today.
Mikhail Saakashvili is a U.S.-educated lawyer who came to power after the so-called Rose Revolution four years ago. He's tried to push Georgia closer to NATO and the European Union - to the dismay of the country's much bigger neighbor, Russia.
NPR's Gregory Feifer is in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and joins me on the line.
Greg, how big a win does this seem to be for Saakashvili?
GREGORY FEIFER: Well, according to exit polls, this is a very big win. And the figures are showing that he won more than 50 percent of the votes, a majority which enables him to avoid a runoff in two weeks. Saakashvili today told me after casting his vote that the election was really about whether the Georgian people wanted to continue the radical reforms that he has undertaken, trying to reduce the country's poverty, trying to overhaul its economy, and also very important, trying to push Georgia closer toward the West. He said that a win for him would mean that Georgia would continue on this path that he began four years ago.
SEABROOK: The president scheduled the election after he'd used force to crackdown on protesters back in November. He got a lot of flack for that especially from the West. What's been the reaction from his opponents to his win?
FEIFER: Well, his main opponents have said that Saakashvili has falsified the vote count. They are not accepting the results and they are calling for a protest in the streets tomorrow afternoon, local time in Georgia. We'll have to see just how many people will come out.
When I was speaking to voters today at polling stations in the capital, many of them said that they had voted for opposition figures, but that they still respected the president and that they thought that the campaign was largely free and fair. And my sense was that people really weren't ready to come out. That they were ready to respect the results, whichever way they went.
SEABROOK: There were Western election monitors there, weren't there also? And what did they say about the fairness and freeness of this election?
FEIFER: That's right. There are more than a thousands international observers here, and there have been some instances of reported violations, and international observers have said that they had verified some reports. But largely, the first reaction is that this election was free and fair. The OSCE's main election monitoring body is set to hold a news conference tomorrow and they're not officially commenting until this news conference. But so far, the reaction has been that Georgia is passing the democracy test.
SEABROOK: Now, let's remember for a moment that Georgia is in a strategic location near Iran and Turkey. There's an important oil pipeline that runs through Georgia and there was a referendum question on the ballot today, asking voters whether Georgia should join NATO. What was the result of that, Greg?
FEIFER: According to the exit polls, more than 60 percent of voters said that they wanted Georgia to join NATO. Now, Georgia is sandwiched essentially between Russia and the West. And Russia has reacted furiously to President Saakashvili's drive for his country to join NATO, to integrate with the West. And Russia has enacted today a full economic embargo. You can't fly Tbilisi from Moscow. I had to fly through Istanbul. You can't buy Georgian products in Russia. So Russia has really done a lot to try to, actually, undermine Saakashvili's rule.
Moscow also supports two separatist provinces inside Georgia. But Georgian people say that they want the country to join NATO. Every single opposition candidate agrees with President Saakashvili that Georgia should join NATO and that it should move closer to the West and this is one thing that voters to whom I was speaking today all agreed that this is something that they wanted to see too.
SEABROOK: NPR's Gregory Feifer in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Thank you very much.
FEIFER: You're welcome.