Iraq vote count too close to call
The votes tallied so far suggest weeks or months of horse-trading ahead.
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| Iraq election tally so far |
Also, as the results are not drawn equally from across the city, the figures are not representative.
Of the votes counted, 75 per cent were from Risafa, which is a predominiately Shia district and 25 per cent comes from Karkh, which is more Sunni and mixed.
Caution over Baghdad
Hazem al-Nuaimi, a political analyst, cautioned against reading too much into any early results from Baghdad as the city is now largely segregated along sectarian lines.
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“It is clear that the final votes will be distributed among the blocs closely,” Nuaimi said. “This means there will no winning bloc with a big margin.”
Baghdad is worth twice as many seats in Iraq’s next parliament as the next largest province.
The parliament has a total of 325 seats.
The votes tallied so far suggest weeks or months of horse-trading ahead to form a government and pick a prime minister.
Allegations of fraud may also unsettle the scenario.
Iraqiya has charged that ballots were dumped in the garbage, nearly a quarter of a million soldiers were denied voting rights and electoral commission workers fiddled with vote counts.
After the last elections in 2005, sectarian violence erupted as politicians took months to form a government.