The early reports from Iraq (UPDATED)

Amidst the whirl and rush on health care, Iraq’s votes are slowly being counted, but we do have some initial trends out of the released partials (Institute for the Study of War).

Here’s what we have so far:

• State of Law (Maliki’s list): 74-79 MPs
• Iraqiya (Allawi’s List): 69-79 MPs
• INA (formerly UIA, essentially Iran’s list): 60-63 MPs
• Kurdistan List (the established Kurdish parties): 33-36 MPs
• Gorran (opposition Kurdish list): 8-10 MPs
• Other parties: 11-18 MPs
• 50-68 MPs unallocated at this time

From what I can tell, the unalloacted split is even between Shiite provinces and non-Shiite provinces, with 5-8 seats still up for grabs in the three-way melee that is Baghdad.

Assuming the numbers don’t generally change (and they could, one could even see Iraqiya pass State of Law), it means that the INA has enough MPs to serve as kingmaker – unless Maliki and Allawi form a Grand Coalition, in which case, they could govern on their own without anyone else.  It does not appear that either of the top two parties can govern without the other or the INA.

I would also be stunned if Allawi and the INA form a government together, but it’s politics, so you never know.

Bad news: Tehran’s favorite (INA) will either be the junior coalition partner or the lead opposition.  Their complete marginalization was not acheived.

Good news: The INA isn’t nearly as powerful as they were after 2005.  In part, this is because Maliki took his Dawa faction out, but also because more and more voters are leery of Tehran.

Biggest surprises: Anbar – where Maliki managed to get the Anbar Awakening group in his State of Law coalition, and he still appears to have been shut out;  Allawi waxed him – and Kirkuk – where Gorran seems to have peeled enough votes away from the Kurdistan List to give Allawi 1st place.

Party to watch: Fadhila – a religious Shiite party (and thus part of INA) which is not particularly fond of Iran.  We don’t know the strength of the smaller factions within the Big Four, but because Iraq went with an open list format (voters could select candidates individually as well as go with straight-list voting), the factions within can each claim their own mandates, as it were.  This might have mattered with the Anbar Awakening crew possibly bolting State of Law, but Anbar voters appear to have made that moot by shutting State of Law out.  Fadhila (and some independents) could decide Tehran mullahs are a bigger problem than American troops or secular parties, in which case they could bolt INA and completely upset the apple cart.

Making a long story short: Things will be better in 2010 than they were in 2009, and could get even better still.

Cross-posted to RWL

UPDATE: Bill Roggio has a projection from Reidar Visser which shows Iraqiya (INM) could indeed pull ahead of State of Law.  The numbers are close enough that it could go either way, but scoring in first could be a major symbolic victory for Allawi, and possibly enough to reclaim the title of Prime Minister.  Also, if these projections hold, INA would not have enough seats mathematically to play kingmaker (although they’d be very close, assuming they hold together – see above).

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