Georgians are going to the polls on Saturday, October 26 in a decisive vote on their push to join the European Union, the BBC reports.

Some see this election as the most crucial vote since Georgians backed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. "I voted for a new Georgia," said pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili.

The governing Georgian Dream party is widely expected to come first, but four opposition groups believe they can combine forces to remove it from power and revive Georgia's EU process.

Four out of every five voters are said to back joining the EU in this South Caucasus state, which fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008.

It was only last December that the EU made Georgia a candidate. But a few months ago it froze that bid, accusing the government of democratic backsliding, over a Russia-style law that requires groups to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power" if they receive 20% of funding from abroad.

About 3.5 million Georgians are eligible to vote in an election that the opposition is calling a choice between Europe or Russia, but which the government frames as a matter of peace or war.

Georgian Dream, known as GD, is set to win about a third of the vote according to opinion polls, although they are widely seen as unreliable. If GD is to be unseated, all four of the main opposition groups will have to win upwards of 5% of the vote to qualify for the 150-seat parliament.