Iraq

Another morning, another batch of Iraqi election results. Roughly 80 percent of the ballots have been counted, and Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition now has a narrow nationwide lead (9,000 votes) over Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law.

The race in Baghdad continues to tighten up. Yesterday's results from the capital put State of Law at 518,203, and Iraqiyya at 453,028, a 13 percent gap. Today, State of Law has 663,311 votes, compared to 594,053 for Iraqiyya -- a 10 percent difference.

As usual, full results are here.

Refugees International has a new report out on the grievous humanitarian situation confronting the millions of Iraqi refugees and IDPs displaced by the war.

The United Nations estimates that more than 2.2 million Iraqis have fled since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Just 426,000 -- less than one-fifth -- have returned, according to the RI report. Some are too traumatized to come back; others would like to, but worry about a lack of jobs or housing, neither of which are provided adequately by the Iraqi government.

... but on the day Iraqiyya seems to be pulling neck-and-neck with State of Law, Ali al-Adeeb -- a senior member of the Dawa party (and thus State of Law) -- demanded a full recount and accused Iyad Allawi's people of rigging the election.

Could Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition win the largest share of seats in Iraq's next parliament? Reidar Visser thinks so -- and the numbers we have so far seem to support his theory. (You can see the latest results here).

On a national level, State of Law (1.75 million votes) is still outpacing Iraqiyya (1.3 million) -- though that could change as we get further results, particularly those from Baghdad and Anbar. And the totals are ultimately less important than the province-by-province numbers, which determine the allocation of parliamentary seats.

Busy day for me, so don't expect much blogging until tonight. But I did take a little time to update our Iraq election results database, because the Independent High Electoral Commission released a major new batch of numbers. All provinces have now reported 60 percent or more of their votes.

Notable trends: Kirkuk is still basically neck-and-neck between Iraqiyya and the Kurdistan Alliance; State of Law has a considerable lead over the Iraqi National Alliance in most Shi'ite provinces, save for Dhi Qar; the Iraqi Unity coalition (interior minister Jawad al-Bolani and Awakening leader Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha) is doing very poorly, losing to Iraqiyya in Anbar province by nearly an 8-to-1 margin; the Gorran movement made a strong showing in Sulaymaniyah.

As always, you can view the complete results here. More blogging later.

Update, 9:12 a.m.: IHEC just released numbers from the last four governorates (Dhi Qar, Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah, and Wassit) still uncounted. We now have preliminary tallies from all 18 provinces -- though some are still less than 20 percent complete.

Original post: Another batch of results from Iraq, this time from Karbala province, where prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition has a roughly two-to-one lead over the Iraqi National Alliance. You can view the latest results here.

The Independent High Electoral Commission hasn't posted numbers from Kirkuk yet, but there are reports that Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition has a narrow lead over the Kurdistan Alliance. That would be a surprising outcome -- though preliminary results could oversample Sunni neighborhoods and therefore be misleading.

Struan Stevenson, the president of the European Union's delegation to Iraq, complained on Friday about vote tampering, which he said boosted prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition at the expense of Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya bloc.

Stevenson's office sent us a press release this morning that contains further allegations of fraud, both before and after the ballot.

We've updated our Iraqi election results page with numbers from Baghdad, Muthanna, Ninewa and Qadisiyah provinces. Note that these are very preliminary results -- the Independent High Electoral Commission has tallied less than 20 percent of the ballots in each of these provinces. You can view the latest results here.

I put together a dedicated page for the latest Iraqi election results; we'll update this table whenever IHEC releases new data.

IHEC hasn't released any new results (عربي) today, so the latest official data is still the preliminary results from six provinces reported yesterday.

But the commission did release a statement that generally characterizes the vote in four southern provinces. We already knew prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition did well in Babil and Najaf provinces. The commission says State of Law is also leading in Dhi Qar, Wassit, Qadisiyah and Muthanna provinces. All four are majority-Shi'ite. None are particularly large; Dhi Qar is probably the only one with a population larger than one million.

We've heard a lot of talk about voter fraud in the days since the election -- but how much of it is legitimate, and how much is simply political parties trying to sow doubts about the election to discredit the winner?

Update, 12:58 p.m.: IHEC released data for Misan province, too, which we've added to the table.

Original post: IHEC released another batch of preliminary results -- for Erbil, Diyala and Salaheddin provinces -- which also updates yesterday's numbers from Babel and Najaf. A cautionary note: These are not final numbers; only between 18 and 35 percent of the vote in each province has been counted.

Iraqiyya was the big winner in Diyala and Salaheddin provinces. State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance posted similar results in both provinces; interior minister Jawad al-Bolani's Iraqi Unity alliance did fairly well in Salaheddin, placing second.

In Erbil, the Kurdistan Alliance currently has a clear majority, with more than 90,000 votes. The Gorran movement placed second; two Islamic Kurdish parties followed.

Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission released preliminary results today from two provinces, Babel and Najaf, both predominantly Shi'ite.

Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition has a modest lead over the Iraqi National Alliance, the Shi'ite coalition between the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadrist movement. Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition placed a distant third in both provinces. Maliki doesn't have a majority in either province: He won about 47 percent of the vote in Najaf, and 42 percent in Babel.

No surprises here, really, and this first batch of results basically correspondents with the rumors we've heard in the Iraqi press. The numbers are after the jump.

Thought the de-Ba'athification controversy would end with the election? Think again:

Ahmed Chalabi and Ali al Lami, the men responsible for the purge of hundreds of candidates with Baathist links from the Iraqi elections, said they are taking the country's Independent Higher Electoral Commission to court in a bid to have votes for 55 candidates voided.

These 55 candidates are replacements for 55 other candidates who were already barred by the Justice and Accountability Commission. Chalabi and Lami say the replacements are Ba'athists, too. The fun never stops! Their names and the provinces they hail from haven't been released yet (at least, I can't seem to find them).

We've pulled together the preliminary province-by-province voter turnout numbers from Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (no turnout data for Karbala province yet, for some reason). They're in a table after the jump, along with data from the December 2005 parliamentary elections (pdf), also from IHEC.

Every province reported a lower turnout in 2010 than in 2005. Misan province had the lowest turnout, with 50 percent; Dahuk had the highest, at 80 percent. Turnout was generally highest in northern Iraq, and gets lower as you head further south.

IHEC says preliminary results will be released tomorrow morning (Baghdad time), so we hope to have some details later tonight (there's a lot of perhaps-not-very-well-informed speculation in the Iraqi press, if you need something to hold you over). Relatedly: Michael Hanna has some good points, as usual, on the turnout numbers.

There's a lot of speculation (عربي) in Iraqi newspapers this morning about election results (عربي). I'm not going to bother summarizing it: The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) says it won't release even preliminary results until March 10 or 11, so any reported results at this point are probably uninformed guesswork. IHEC actually held a press conference last night (عربي) warning everyone not to trust these early reports.

President Obama issued a few brief remarks yesterday afternoon, after polls closed in Iraq. Most of it was fairly standard stuff -- glad to see the brave Iraqi people exercising their right to vote, terrorists tried and failed to disrupt the election, etc. -- but he also made a slightly interesting comment about the withdrawal timetable.

I'm sure it will annoy Henry Kissinger and the Washington Post's editorial board, but I (for one) was glad to see this Washington Post story on the White House "keeping its distance" from the Iraqi elections. It reflects a sensible policy decision by the Obama administration: The U.S. has diminishing influence in Iraq, and its efforts to influence the elections have been decried as meddling, so a hands-off approach is best.

Polls closed in Iraq a few minutes ago after 10 hours of voting. The ballot was marred by a few dozen insurgent attacks around the country -- but casualties are remarkably low, and voter turnout (anecdotally at least) seems to be fairly high.

We'll update this thread throughout the day with new developments. Today's news will largely come from non-Iraqi sources: Many Iraqi newspapers suspended publication for the day to allow their staffs time to vote. Here's Al-Rafidayn's statement on the suspension (عربي), for example; As-Sabaah has a banner across its homepage (عربي). So most of today's news comes from Western and pan-Arab news sources.

I forgot to make this point in yesterday's Maliki/SOFA post -- thanks to Joel Wing (in comments) and Michael Hanna (via e-mail) for reminding me.

I do think the Iraqi and American governments will renegotiate the status of forces in a very limited sense, either later this year or next, to provide for a small contingent of U.S. trainers in Iraq. This is standard practice in countries that receive U.S. military aid: If the Pentagon gives high-tech military hardware to another army, someone has to teach that army how to use its new equipment. And Iraq will continue to receive billions in military aid for years to come.

But we're talking about, at most, a few thousand troops -- not the Korea on the Tigris envisioned by Tom Ricks. When I said yesterday that Maliki is unlikely to renegotiate the SOFA, I was referring to that latter scenario.