Predictions Based on Partial Results: Allawi Emerges as a Possible Front-Runner

This is a back-of-an-envelope calculation and it likely contains several errors. I am especially troubled that I keep getting different electoral dividers from everyone I’m comparing notes with! Nonetheless, the partial results are now getting quite substantial in scope, and for what it may be worth, here follows an attempt at simulating the final outcome if the trends observed so far remain stable. Noteworthy tendencies include the strong performance of Allawi everywhere north of Baghdad: This adds up and puts him in front, since the southern governorates remain subdivided. And with the consistently strong showing by the Sadrists and their marginalisation of ISCI within the INA (see today’s earlier post below), is it not time that Allawi focuses his talks on them rather than on Hakim? It is also interesting to see how small parties who miss the threshold of the electoral divider  lose out completely because of the counting rules (in small constiuencies like Muthanna and Maysan, 10% of the vote may be insufficient to win a seat), and how the big parties are systematically favoured in the count of the last remaining seats. Obviously, for the same reasons, small changes can have a quite dramatic impact on the final results, so there is still much to play for here.

	Percentage counted	INA	SLA	INM	Unity of Iraq	Tawafuq	Kurdistan Alliance	Other or too close to call
Basra	84	7	14	2				1
Maysan	60	6	4
Dhi Qar	73	9	8	1
Muthanna	75	3	4
Qadisiyya	60	5	5	1
Babel	61	6	7	2				1
Najaf	63	5	7
Karbala	61	3	6	1
Wasit	88	4	5	1				1
Baghdad	60	16	27	24		1
Anbar	78			12	1	1
Salahaddin	63			10	1	1
Diyala	62	2	1	9			1
Nineveh	63	1		21	1	1	6	1
Kirkuk	69			6			6
Arbil	64						10	2+2
Dahuk	61						9	1
Sulimaniya	75						7	6+2+1+1
Total		67	88	90	3	4	39	19

Excluding 8 minority seats and 7 compensation seats

Baghdad Projections Based on a 60 Percent Count

The latest IHEC numbers are beginning to trickle in. Baghdad at 60% is significant enough to report separately, with the following rough projection for the 68 non-minority seats:

State of Law: 27 seats

Iraqiyya: 24 seats

Iraqi National Alliance: 16 seats

Tawafuq: 1 seat

It is noteworthy that Iraqiyya is doing particularly well compared with the previous figures, and now stands at 32% of the total vote, closing the gap to Maliki somewhat. The case of Baghdad also exemplifies how the particular proportional-representation system chosen by Iraq is not especially proportional and works to the disadvantage of smaller parties: Unity of Iraq, Ahrar, Ittihad al-Shaab and the Kurds should all have had one seat each if the system were perfectly proportional, but since they did not meet the threshold for the first allocation of seats in this example (around 35,000 votes), “their” seats are given to the “winning” lists instead.

At the individual level, the Sadrists continue to do particularly well, with the following approximate list for the top 16 INA candidates that are likely to win seats in parliament, adjusted for voter preferences:

1. Jaafari
2. Solagh
3. Sadrist
4. Sadrist
5. Sadrist
6. Sadrist
7. Sadrist
8. Sadrist
9. Chalabi
10. Sadrist
11. Sadrist
12. Sadrist
13. ISCI
14. Badr
15. Sadrist
16. Sadrist