January 28, 2005, 8:18 a.m.
Handicapping
What to watch for as Iraqis vote.

Sunday's election in Iraq was mandated in the "Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period." It will establish the Iraqi transitional government, which will replace the existing Iraqi interim government, and begin phase two of the transition period. There is a single nationwide ballot for the 275-seat Iraqi national assembly. Eighty-three party and individual electoral lists with a total of 7,200 candidates are contending for those seats. In addition, there are separate ballots in each of the 18 Iraqi governates to elect 41-member governing councils (51-member in Baghdad), which will function as provincial governments. Over 380 party lists representing 7,850 candidates are seeking these 748 seats. Finally, voters in Kurdish areas will choose from among 499 candidates representing 14 parties for the 111-seat Kurdish National Council.

Naturally, most attention has focused on the national assembly. The assembly's most important task will be writing the permanent constitution for the country. The draft, due no later than August 15, 2005, will be put to a referendum in October. If approved, elections for the first post-transition Iraqi government will be held in December 2005.

Iraq is using a party-list system, a type of proportional representation in which voters cast their ballot for a party, not an individual (except when an individual chooses to run without a party). Seats in the national assembly are then allocated based on the percentage of the vote gained by each party. Depending on turnout, each party would have to attract around 25,000 to 45,000 votes per seat. The seats are allocated by each party to their candidates, in an order of the party's choosing. Usually the candidate lists are available before the elections so that voters have a reasonable idea of whom they are voting for, based on who is towards the top of each party list.

However, most major parties have resisted publishing their lists, citing security concerns. This may be valid, but it also sets up a critical round of negotiations within each party once they know how many of the 275 seats they have won. So while the broad outlines of the new government will be established by the popular vote, the critical details of who actually gets to sit in the Assembly will be determined by behind-the-scenes deals the likes of which can only be imagined. One can furthermore look forward to a spirited series of rules debates and credentials challenges once the Assembly convenes. Note also that 25 percent of the assembly seats have been set aside for women; it will be intriguing to see if and how parties exploit loopholes in the election laws to find ways around this quota.

The major players

As noted, there are hundreds of parties fielding thousands of candidates — a fact that alone indicates the drive of the Iraqi people to participate in politics. Most attention has focused on three major party coalitions:

The United Iraqi Alliance, also known as the Shia list, is a coalition of 16 primarily (though not exclusively) Shia parties. The dominant partner is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim will probably hold a key position of power in the new government, perhaps prime minister. The list has gained influence through the endorsement of Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani. Opponents charge that the group is in the sway of Iran and seeks to bring about the Islamic revolution mentioned in SCIRI's name. Party leaders and Iran both deny any association, though clearly the group receives financial backing from the east. The alliance is political home to two notables familiar to Americans. Moqtada al Sadr was brought into this group with some difficulty because of personal rivalries. The former Coalition's most-wanted rabble-rouser has lately been holding peaceful demonstrations over issues such as electricity and fuel, while encouraging his followers to get out and vote. More surprising has been the durability of Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress party and one of the principal organizers of the Alliance. Chalabi was once among the most distrusted men in Iraq, seen as a tool of American imperialism. However, the Coalition-approved raid on his home last May, coupled with CIA denunciations of Chalabi as a spy for Iran, helped bring about his political resurrection. Chalabi stands to wield significant power and influence in the new government, if the current government does not arrest him first.

Current interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi leads the Iraqi List, a coalition of six parties and one independent candidate (Raja Habib al-Khuzai). Allawi is a secular Shiite who polls highest nationally for the post of prime minister at 35 percent — not a resounding endorsement, but much higher than Hakim, who comes in around 4 percent. Allawi has some of the advantages of incumbency, but also the disadvantages: His opponents point out his poor record on maintaining the national infrastructure or providing security. Others simply seem him as a creature of the United States.

The third major grouping is the Kurdistan Alliance, comprised of many of the Kurdish parties with some Assyrians and Chaldeans. The alliance brings together rivals Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They will be waging a close fight in the Kurdish National Council race, but their alliance for the national-assembly ballot makes good political sense. The Kurds enjoy a degree of political autonomy in the new Iraq, and Kurdish areas have been free of most of the violence that has wracked other parts of the country. In short, the Kurds have a lot to lose, and seek to have as strong a presence in the national assembly as possible to preserve their rights.

There are other smaller party coalitions, such as the People's Union, a Communist-led progressive grouping; the Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc; the Constitutional Monarchy Movement (which despite its name is thought to be very powerful behind the scenes); the Turkoman front; and of course the even smaller and more arcane parties such as the Grouping of Grandsons of the 1920 Revolution, the Bloc of the Iraqi Shaban Uprising of 1991, and the Iraqi Hashemite Monarchy Group. American conservatives would probably feel most comfortable with the National Grouping of the Center Trend, a secularist, classical-liberal, free-market, low-tax, socially tolerant party with absolutely no chance of winning anything.

Getting out the vote

It is difficult to know how the race is shaping up. Opinion polling is tricky in Iraq — one story has it that some pollsters were tortured and whipped after straying into an area controlled by anti-election forces. Some groups have attempted to avoid this problem by holding Internet polls, but that limits the sample to Internet users, a growing but limited segment of the population.

One recent fairly reliable nationwide poll showed the United Iraqi Alliance with 42 percent, the Kurdistan Alliance with 22 percent, the Iraqi List with 20 percent, and the remaining 16 percent divided between smaller parties and undecideds. Most noteworthy is the result for the Shia-based UIA, which, while leading, only enjoys plurality support, not the clear majority most have predicted. If this holds it will mean that the UIA will not be able to control the Assembly without coalition partners, and if Israel is any model (God willing it will be) this will lead to a great deal of bargaining and compromise.

Turnout will be high, despite the threat of violence. Get-out-the-vote ads are running 15-20 times a day on most networks. A recent U.N./Iraq poll shows that 80-95 percent of the voters in the north and south intend to participate. The same poll showed only a third in the less-settled and more Sunni middle of the country will go to the polls, though a separate poll showed two-thirds in Baghdad intending to vote, and another in Babil province south of Baghdad showed support for the election in the 90-percent range. The expatriate vote is expected to be low, and not to play a significant role. I predict that national turnout will be greater than voter participation in the United States — I offer that for those reporters hungry for quantitative metrics of success. Higher turnout will tend to benefit Allawi, because the increases would have to come primarily from groups where he could expect the most support, the reluctant Sunnis and secular Shias.

Sunnis in particular will participate in higher-than-expected numbers. The Sunni election boycott has softened as election day has neared. Some Sunni parties have abandoned the boycott altogether; for example, octogenarian political veteran Adnan Pachachi, head of the Independent Democrats Grouping (a Sunni-Shia mix) had previously called for a boycott to force a delay in the vote but now is urging all Iraqis to go to the polls. Interim President Ghazi Ajil al-Yawir, head of the Sunni/Shia Iraqis party has also come down solidly in favor of the vote, after indicating he favored delay. Other shifts are subtler. The main two Sunni parties, the Committee of Muslim Scholars and the Iraq Islamic party, have lifted their boycott in the local elections in Diyala, a large province east of Baghdad along the Iranian border. The parties seemed to have realized that they had a good chance of commanding much of the vote in that Sunni-majority province; and more to the point, if they stuck to the boycott they would be handing local power to the Kurdish minority. Sunni voters who participate in the Diyala local elections may also decide to cast votes for the national assembly. The Islamic party further softened its position by stating that even though they are not interested in participating in the national election, they do want to hold portfolios in the government and help write the new constitution. I would not be surprised if after the dust settled they wound up with some minor government agency.

And the winner is...

The final results will be announced ten days after election day, with a preliminary count due within a week. Those who desire to question the legitimacy of the race will raise all manner of conspiracy theories; the types have become familiar: The vote count was fixed by the Americans, the ballots were specially coded by Mossad, whatever paranoid fantasy you can conjure. Nevertheless, one will undoubtedly be able to find true irregularities — missing ballots, fake ballots, multiple voting, intimidation, and of course baksheesh. However, it would be unreasonable to hold this election up to contemporary standards in the developed democracies and declare it a failure. By those standards, most elections in the history of the United States were illegitimate. The proper analytical lens for interpreting what will emerge from this election can be found in the age of machine politics. Tribal and religious leaders will fill the functions of ward bosses; they will deliver their precincts en bloc for the parties with which they are affiliated. In return, they will be awarded with patronage, a piece of the action, be it development money, local taxation power, a cut of the oil revenue, government contracts, whatever. The bargaining will be continuous, and will cut across and between party lines. It will be a modification of the traditional tribute system that kept stability in tribal societies. One can call it corruption or honest graft, but it would be unrealistic to expect anything else.

Then there are the terrorists, who will seek to disrupt the election through whatever violent means are at their disposal. It is impossible to predict what impact they will have, except that their activities will receive the most Western media coverage while surely deserving it the least. Al Qaeda prime contractor Musab al Zarqawi has been making almost daily rants against democracy, and carrying out operations against politicians, poll workers, and police. However, there is a sense that this is backfiring. Zarqawi is not an Iraqi, and most of his followers are also foreign-born and — funded. His increasing focus on Iraqi targets has raised questions about for whom he is fighting his liberation struggle. Zarqawi's threats and attacks have not been able to slow the growing election momentum. A spokesman for SCIRI memorably stated, "Saddam killed five million people. Do you think a man like Zarqawi, with his dozens or even hundreds of victims, can frighten us?" Once a legitimate Iraqi government is in place, Zarqawi has pledged to destroy it. This will spell the end of his movement as the Iraqis begin to defend what is truly theirs.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.