The 2012 Georgian parliamentary elections on Monday posted a turnout rate of 60.8 percent, the country's Central Election Commission announced.

Some 2.2 million voters registered within the South Caucasus country cast their ballot on Monday. The Central Election Commission has registered 3,613,851 voters from within the country.

During the country's 2008 legislative elections, the voter turnout was 53.9 percent as some 1.8 million voters cast their ballot.

The election commission is scheduled to announce the final result on Oct. 20. But local media reports suggested that the commission would release early official results on Tuesday.

A total of 1,641 foreign observers representing 61 CEC- registered international institutions monitored this year's elections along with 62,115 local observers from Georgia.

A total of 3,295 press personnel from both home and abroad have registered to cover Monday's voting conducted in 3,719 polling stations.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili acknowledged during a televised speech that his ruling United National Movement party had lost in the party-list proportional ballot to the opposition coalition Georgian Dream but claimed victory in the pluralistic single-seat constituency ballot.

The ruling party claimed that it had won 53 of the 73 single- seat majoritarian constituencies.

Voters from home and abroad were to elect 73 members of parliament from as many single-seat constituencies.

The voters were also to vote elect 77 proportionally- representative members of parliament through a mechanism known as the 5-percent threshold in Georgia.

Any of the registered political parties which has garnered over 5 percent of the total ballot will be allocated parliamentary seats in proportion to their shares of votes.

Previously, the majoritarian and proportional ballots halved the elections for the 150-seat unicameral legislature of Georgia.

In 2012, parties in Georgia, both ruling and opposition, agreed to reduce to 73 seats the quota for majoritarian ballot and to increase to 77 seats the quota for proportional ballot.