Iraq- final results

[minionofmidas]

These are provisional, but:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4261035.stm

The Shia parties got 48%.

I think this is a lesson about making assumptions on 10% of votes counted.

Yep, that's pretty low.

[minionofmidas]

Kurds did surprisingly well :-).

...amid allegations of massive fraud.

[minionofmidas]

[minionofmidas]

Keep in mind that Iraq uses to Hare system which is biased to the big parties[...]

This is false. Hare is as unbiased as Sainte-Laguë, but behaves more erratically.

Hare is somewhat biased towards small parties actually, much like D'Hondt is somwhat biased towards major parties. It's used in Germany.

[minionofmidas]

and has far more personal followers in Iran than the theocratic hard-liners there.

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Not the same.

[minionofmidas]

and has far more personal followers in Iran than the theocratic hard-liners there.

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Not the same.

Err, which parts aren't the same? If you mean 'the theocratic hardliners' and 'the Iranian government', well, there's some powerless moderates left in Iran's government but following the last set of rigged elections it's all hard-liners in control.
If it's something else, err...?

That's what I meant, yeah. One of those powerless moderates left is the President IIRC. You're right that things have changed a lot thanks to those boycotted (with a reason) election. (Although it might be said that "has more personal followers" is not quite the same as "is more popular", at least not in this context, that is not what I meant.)

[minionofmidas]

Yep, most reformist candidates - okay, well-nigh-all the well known reformist candidates were banned from running.
Rather than trying a big publicity campaign for the remaining ones, Liberals all over the country called for vote abstention, which is what most people ended up doing.
I don't know the exact turnout, but it was under 50% IIRC (and it was something like 80% the time before.)