Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, looked likely to have won an outright victory in Saturday’s snap presidential elections in the troubled former Soviet republic, election officials said on Sunday night.

With almost all the votes counted, preliminary results indicated that Mr Saakashvili had won 52.8 per cent of the vote, ahead of the 50 per cent required to avoid a ­second-round run-off, according to Levan Tarkhnishvili, head of the Central Election Commission.