The United Iraqi Alliance, backed by Iraq's prominent Shiite clerics, captured more than two-thirds of the 3.3 million votes counted so far, the election commission said Friday. The party of Interim Prime Minister Eyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, had about 18 percent, say more than 579,700 votes.
Those latest partial figures from Sunday's contest for 275 National Assembly seats came from 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces, said Hamdiyah al-Husseini, an election commission official. All 10 provinces have heavy Shiite populations, and the Alliance had been projected to do well there. So far, 45 percent of the vote has been counted in Baghdad.
No figures have been published from the Kurdish provinces of the north or mainly Sunni provinces north and west of the capital.
