There are those that say that the Vietnam Election results from 1967 are a precedent that informs the Iraqi Results announced about 90 minutes ago (1pm GMT, 4pm Iraqi Time).
I would argue differently. The national results which *provisionally give the following:
Are a clear victory for the Shi'a UIA list with the Kurds putting in a very strong showing. This gives the Kurds+Shi'a 74%. For key votes in the provisional national assembly 67% is needed. Also the Shi'a list have to be in government.
*provisional - subject to appeal by parties
Note I have only reported those parties that got over a million votes.
Most of the parties got small votes which will not deliver any representatives. 85 parties got less than 10,000 votes. That will probably give the Shi'a UIA a majority in the Assembly. (As those votes will most likely not be counted towards anything. I have, however, not checked the rules on this. )
This gives the "big three" 7,419,789. If you assume 250,000ish other votes are counted towards representatives that gives a vote that matters of say 7,750,000.
This gives the UIA 53% and Kurds 28%.
There is a possiblity of calm in the future, but only if the belligerent forces are withdrawn.
Election Rules
I don't know what the rules are that relate the elected representatives and the numbers of votes. The system is a party list system which elects a number of representatives from a list starting with the first one. There are a number of systems that can be used. D'Hondt and St Lague are the most common. Both of these provide representatives until all the representatives have been allocated. I believe every third candidate is required to be female.
Mathematically the number of votes cast divided by 275 is 30,750. This would imply any party with more than 30,750 votes gets someone. Note that 85 parties have less than 10,000 and will get nothing. The allocation system tends to bias towards the larger parties as well. If they are using one of these systems then they probably will
The difference in Vietnam particularly was that the opposition to the US was divided into a large number of groups. The US sympathising faction in Vietnam got 35% of the vote and won. In Iraq the US associated faction (which also called for troop withdrawal in Arabic) only got 14%.
To that extent the result differs in that the winners cannot be defined as being sympathetic with the US. The Kurds have their own interests which have historically aligned with the US, but they don't have a blocking vote.
It is clear that the US have trained their sights on Iran. Hence having elections in Iraq which result in a faction seen as sympathetic to Iran being elected will not go down well with the Project for a New American Century.
I would argue differently. The national results which *provisionally give the following:
| 130 Kurd Alliance | 2,175,551 | 26% |
| 169 Shi'a UIA | 4,075,295 | 48% |
| 285 | 1,168,943 | 14% |
| Total Votes | 8,456,266 |
Are a clear victory for the Shi'a UIA list with the Kurds putting in a very strong showing. This gives the Kurds+Shi'a 74%. For key votes in the provisional national assembly 67% is needed. Also the Shi'a list have to be in government.
*provisional - subject to appeal by parties
Note I have only reported those parties that got over a million votes.
Most of the parties got small votes which will not deliver any representatives. 85 parties got less than 10,000 votes. That will probably give the Shi'a UIA a majority in the Assembly. (As those votes will most likely not be counted towards anything. I have, however, not checked the rules on this. )
| Vote Range | No of Parties |
| 0-10,000 | 85 |
| 10,001-50,000 | 13 |
| 50,001-100,000 | 4 |
| 100,001-1,000,000 | 1 - list 255 at 150,680 Ghazi al-Yawer (Sunni Arab - President) |
| Over 1 Million | 3 as above |
This gives the "big three" 7,419,789. If you assume 250,000ish other votes are counted towards representatives that gives a vote that matters of say 7,750,000.
This gives the UIA 53% and Kurds 28%.
There is a possiblity of calm in the future, but only if the belligerent forces are withdrawn.
Election Rules
I don't know what the rules are that relate the elected representatives and the numbers of votes. The system is a party list system which elects a number of representatives from a list starting with the first one. There are a number of systems that can be used. D'Hondt and St Lague are the most common. Both of these provide representatives until all the representatives have been allocated. I believe every third candidate is required to be female.
Mathematically the number of votes cast divided by 275 is 30,750. This would imply any party with more than 30,750 votes gets someone. Note that 85 parties have less than 10,000 and will get nothing. The allocation system tends to bias towards the larger parties as well. If they are using one of these systems then they probably will
The difference in Vietnam particularly was that the opposition to the US was divided into a large number of groups. The US sympathising faction in Vietnam got 35% of the vote and won. In Iraq the US associated faction (which also called for troop withdrawal in Arabic) only got 14%.
To that extent the result differs in that the winners cannot be defined as being sympathetic with the US. The Kurds have their own interests which have historically aligned with the US, but they don't have a blocking vote.
It is clear that the US have trained their sights on Iran. Hence having elections in Iraq which result in a faction seen as sympathetic to Iran being elected will not go down well with the Project for a New American Century.
Comments