I have a
post at Needlenose rounding up some of the news stories about the preliminary voting numbers announced in Iraq today. To sum them up:
-- The governing Shiite religious parties appear likely to come close to, or even duplicate, the roughly 50 percent of the vote they won in January.
-- The much-hyped slate of former U.S.-installed prime minister Iyad Allawi is doing poorly, getting only 14% of the vote in Baghad (thought to be one of its strongholds).
-- Ahmad Chalabi, running on his own after being kicked out of leaving the Shiite alliance, is doing even worse, with only 0.3 percent of the vote in Baghdad and Basra.
This may mean that Chalabi doesn't even get a seat in the legislature. See the extended copy for some added context on the voting.
The
New York Times reports,
"The preliminary results accounted for more than 90 percent of votes cast in 11 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Across the country, nearly seven million ballots have been counted, of an estimated turnout of roughly 11 million voters, electoral officials said."
Contrary to a stream of stories in the U.S. press (especially the NYT), though, rumors of a secular backlash against the United Iraqi Alliance (the ruling coalition of religious Shiite parties) seem to have been exaggerated -- in Baghdad, Allawi is running behind not just the UIA but a Sunni religious slate. (There is talk that the UIA might even try to form a new governing coalition with the religious Sunnis, but I'm not sure how seriously to take this.)
Along with Juan Cole, I predicted two weeks ago that the Allawi boom was not likely to pan out, since (1) he couldn't compete with the nationwide network of mosques and community centers loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and (2) the UIA would likely rig the results if necessary to retain power. One of the reasons the current vote totals are considered preliminary is that complaints of fraud are still being investigated, but it would take a surprising amount of backbone (as well as manpower they may not have) by the UN-backed electoral commission find enough problems to overturn the election.
With regard to Chalabi, his poor showing isn't surprising -- in early November I wrote that he might not make the cut for the new legislature without the UIA's machine behind him. Prof. Cole did similar math, suggesting the Chalabi walked out on the UIA over ideological differences -- being more cynical, I suggested that he had been pushed out in a power play by Muqtada al-Sadr, who supposedly had backed Chalabi for a high-profile role back in January.