ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Following the announcement of the preliminary results of the Iraqi parliamentary elections, the significant gap in parliamentary seats between Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development Coalition (RDC) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which secured the first and second highest number of votes respectively, has raised concern for the KDP, prompting the party to call for amendments to the election law before the next parliamentary vote.
"After the election, one of the main tasks of our representatives, in coordination with other blocs, will be to work on amending the election law," Jaffar Eminki, head of the KDP's election department, told Rudaw.
According to preliminary results from Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), Sudani’s coalition came first with 1,317,446 votes, securing 45 parliamentary seats.
The KDP followed with 1,109,934 votes but won only 27 seats.
Iraq uses a proportional representation system based on the Sainte-Laguë method in which the country’s provinces serve as constituencies. Under this system, total party votes are divided by a fixed quotient to allocate parliamentary seats.
The distribution of seats and the turnout in the parliamentary election law have divided Iraq into 18 different constituencies, with each province allocated a number of seats based on its population, which has limited competition within a single constituency.
Experts say the results of the elections highlight imbalances in Iraq’s current election system and suggest distributing seats between single- and multi-constituency systems as the most suitable solution for future elections.