General election
Iraq: Prime Minister al-Sudani’s coalition wins election
Updated 11/12/2025 – 11:42 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
Prime Minister al-Sudani’s alliance wins Iraq’s parliamentary election. Whether he can remain head of government will probably only become clear in the coming weeks and months.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s alliance clearly won the parliamentary elections in Iraq. According to media reports, Iraq’s electoral commission announced after counting over 99 percent of the votes that the list for reconstruction and development led by al-Sudani (more than 1.3 million votes) had won by a clear margin over the Kurdistan Democratic Party (more than one million votes). A party led by a Sunni politician came in third (around 945,000 votes).
The electoral commission announced a voter turnout of 56.1 percent. This is a significant increase compared to the 2021 election, when turnout was around twelve percentage points lower. Al-Sudani is seeking a second term in office. However, experts see the chances of a second term in office as rather slim – mainly due to deep divisions within the coalition.
More than 21 million of the 46 million Iraqis were called on Tuesday to elect a new parliament. There are 329 seats up for grabs – a quarter of them are reserved for women. However, al-Sudani’s alliance also does not have a sufficient majority, so negotiations must begin between the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties on a coalition.
Negotiations can last several weeks or months. More than 300 observers, including representatives from the United Nations, the Arab League and international controllers, monitored the election process.
More than 20 years after the US invasion and the overthrow of former ruler Saddam Hussein and years of the reign of terror by the IS militia in parts of the country, stability in the Mesopotamian region is still considered fragile. Both the USA and its neighbor Iran are trying to assert their influence in the country. Given tensions between different ethnic and sectarian groups, corruption and ongoing violence, many people’s distrust in politics runs deep.
The election campaign was marked by violence. A Sunni candidate was killed in a car bomb last month. Shortly before polling stations opened on Tuesday, two police officers died in a gun battle outside a candidate’s office in Kirkuk province in the north of the country. The influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had called for a boycott of the election – he is demanding reforms and tougher action against corruption.
