Iraqi Shiites Win, but Margin Is Less Than Projection

The New York Times > International > Middle East: "The sparse participation in four Sunni-majority provinces with nearly seven million Iraqis, a fourth of the country's population, augured poorly for hopes that a significant number of Sunnis might now move toward disavowing the insurgency. Turnouts in the mainly Sunni provinces were as low as 2 percent in Anbar, west of Baghdad, and 17 percent in Nineveh, in the north, where the majority of the votes appeared to have been cast by local minorities of Shiites and Kurds.

The Shiite coalition, backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, won 48 percent of the vote, against 26 percent for the Kurdistan Alliance, a partnership between Mr. Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party and a rival Kurdish group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has said it will push its president, Jalal Talabani, for the post of president in the new government.

Dr. Allawi's party, the Iraqi List, won 14 percent. The remaining 12 percent was scattered among 108 other parties and alliances, none with more than 1.8 percent, the tally posted by Sheik Yawar's group, the Iraqis Party. "